$ ip addrĭepending on the network adapter or interface present, we can see the availed MAC addresses. The ip command is part of the iproute2 package and can be used to display both the MAC address and IP address of your Linux-powered machine using either of the following commands. Find Linux System Mac Address Using IP Command aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ffĪpproaches to Finding MAC Address in Linuxĭepending on the number of network interfaces on your Linux machine like Wi-Fi built-in and Ethernet port, your computer can be associated with more than one MAC Address.

Its display includes a colon or hyphen after every two MAC address digits for easy readability.įor instance, a MAC address can be represented in the following manner. The MAC address of any device is represented by a 12-digit hexadecimal number. MAC address identifies the device you are using since it is imprinted on the device hardware whereas IP address identifies the connection status among devices seeking to communicate on an existing/configured network. There is a key difference between MAC address and IP address and therefore we should not confuse the two. The house in this case is the network interface controller ( NIC). To practically relate to or understand what a MAC address is, think of it as the postal or physical address to a house. The network interface controller ( NIC) uses the MAC address as its assigned unique identifier within an existing network segment. If (ioctl(sock, SIOCGIFCONF, &ifc) = -1) Ĭonst struct ifreq* const end = it + (ifc.The term MAC Address is a derived abbreviation for Media Access Control Address. Int sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_IP) You also want to skip the loopback interface. The mac address will be obtained as a 6-octet binary array. You need to iterate over all the available interfaces on your machine, and use ioctl with SIOCGIFHWADDR flag to get the mac address.

How to get mac address of server linux