Best way to extract MAC address from ifconfig's output?

Question

What is the best way to extract the MAC address from ifconfig\'s output?

Sample output:

bash-3.00# ifconfig eth0        
eth0      Link          


        

Answer 1

this worked for me

ifconfig eth0 | grep -o -E ..:..:..:..:..:..

instead of eth0 you can write the interface you need it's mac address

Answer 2

On Ubuntu 14.04 in terminal

ifconfig | grep HW

Answer 3

I like using /sbin/ip for these kind of tasks, because it is far easier to parse:

$ ip link show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:30:21:48 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

You can trivially get the mac address from this output with awk:

$ ip link show eth0 | awk '/ether/ {print $2}'
00:0c:29:30:21:48

If you want to put a little more effort in, and parse more data out, I recommend using the -online argument to the ip command, which will let you treat every line as a new device:

$ ip -o link 
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue \    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000\    link/ether 00:0c:29:30:21:48 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000\    link/ether 00:0c:29:30:21:52 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: tun0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 100\    link/[65534] 
5: sit0: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop \    link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0

Answer 4

Note: on OS X eth0 may not work. Use p2p0:

ifconfig p2p0 | grep -o -E '([[:xdigit:]]{1,2}:){5}[[:xdigit:]]{1,2}'

Answer 5

I needed to get MAC address of the active adapter, so ended up using this command.

ifconfig -a | awk '/^[a-z]/ { iface=$1; mac=$NF; next } /inet addr:/ { print mac }' | grep -o -E '([[:xdigit:]]{1,2}:){5}[[:xdigit:]]{1,2}'

Hope it helps.

Answer 6

For Ubuntu/Debian

ifconfig | grep HW | awk '{print $5}'

For Rhat or CentOs try

ip add | grep link/ether | awk '{print $2}'