How To Configure Static IP Address On Linux

Setting up a static IP address for your linux box is quite easy. I will show you how to do it through the GUI and command line.

For this tutorial, I have been using CentOS 5 running as a virtual machine on VMware Server 1.0.2.

Setting Up A Static IP Address Using The GUI

If you are using Gnome, click on “System => Administration => Network”.

From the Network Configuration window, select your NIC from de “Devices” tab and click on the “Edit” button.

Select “Statically set IP addresses” and enter the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway. Click OK when done.

Now back to the Network Configuration window, select the DNS tab. Enter your hostname and your DNS servers.

Click on “File => Save” when you’re done.

Setting Up A Static IP Address Using The Command Line

Log on as root, change directory to /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices and list all available devices.

# cd /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices
# ls

Find the configuration file corresponding to the NIC for which you want to set a static IP and edit it.

# vi ifcfg-eth0

I prefer using “joe” as a text editor rather than “vi”. You can install “joe” by issuing “yum install joe”. To invoke joe’s help menu, type “CTRL+K, H” from within the application.

Now set the parameters below according to your settings (those in bold characters only):

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
HWADDR=00:0C:29:DE:94:8B
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=no
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.0.100
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1

Save the configuration file and exit the text editor.

To set the nameservers, change directory to /etc and edit resolv.conf.

# cd /etc
# vi resolv.conf

The file format should be like this:

search your-dns-search-path
nameserver dns1-ip-address
nameserver dns2-ip-address
nameserver dns3-ip-address

Now save the configuration file and exit the text editor. To apply changes, we need to bring the network interface down and back up.

# ifdown eth0
# ifup eth0

If you intend to do that remotely, reboot the server instead as you would be disconnected from your server after issuing the “ifdown” command.