net-tools to iproute cheat sheet

1. blog

This is also known as: "ifconfig is not installed by default anymore, how do I do this only with the ip command?"

I have been slowly training my brain to use the new commands but I sometimes forget some. So, here's a couple of equivalence from the old package to net-tools the new iproute2, about 10 years late:

net-tools	iproute2	shorter form	what it does
arp -an	ip neighbor	ip n
ifconfig	ip address	ip a	show current IP address
ifconfig	ip link	ip l	show link stats (up/down/packet counts)
route	ip route	ip r	show or modify the routing table
route add default GATEWAY	ip route add default via GATEWAY	ip r a default via GATEWAY	add default route to GATEWAY
route del ROUTE	ip route del ROUTE	ip r d ROUTE	remove ROUTE (e.g. default)
netstat -anpe	ss --all --numeric --processes --extended	ss -anpe	list listening processes, less pretty

Another trick

Also note that I often alias ip to ip -br -c as it provides a much prettier output.

Compare, before:

anarcat@angela:~> ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
    altname wlp166s0
    altname wlx8cf8c57333c7
4: virbr0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.122.1/24 brd 192.168.122.255 scope global virbr0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
20: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.108/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute eth0
       valid_lft 40699sec preferred_lft 40699sec

After:

anarcat@angela:~> ip -br -c a
lo               UNKNOWN        127.0.0.1/8 ::1/128 
wlan0            DOWN           
virbr0           DOWN           192.168.122.1/24 
eth0             UP             192.168.0.108/24 

I don't even need to redact MAC addresses! It also affects the display of the other commands, which look similarly neat.

Also imagine pretty colors above.

Finally, I don't have a cheat sheet for iw vs iwconfig (from wireless-tools) yet. I just use NetworkManager now and rarely have to mess with wireless interfaces directly.

Background and history

For context, there are traditionally two ways of configuring the network in Linux:

• the old way, with commands like ifconfig, arp, route and netstat, those are part of the net-tools package
• the new way, mostly (but not entirely!) wrapped in a single ip command, that is the iproute2 package

It seems like the latter was made "important" in Debian in 2008, which means every release since Debian 5 "lenny" has featured the ip command.

The former net-tools package was demoted in December 2016 which means every release since Debian 9 "stretch" ships without an ifconfig command unless explicitly requested. Note that this was mentioned in the release notes in a similar (but, IMHO, less useful) table.

(Technically, the net-tools Debian package source still indicates it is Priority: important but that's a bug I have just filed.)

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, the name iproute is hilarious if you are a bilingual french speaker: it can be read as "I proute" which can be interpreted as "I fart" as "prout!" is the sound a fart makes. The fact that it's called iproute2 makes it only more hilarious.