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HowTo: Create an interface configuration with nmcli on CentOS7 and Fedora

I ran through hell today!

I tried doing things the old way. You know; edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 in order to set it to a static IP. Well, bad idea.

I had all kinds of problems when the two interfaces where online (eth0 and eth1). For example:

  • eth0, even having BOOTPROTO=dhcp, would get the static IP address of eth1.
  • eth1 would get an IPv6 address but not it's static address.
  • network.service would NOT work at all.

So, my solution. Use NetworkManager.

I found that we have nmtui and nmcli. The former has a Terminal User Interface (TUI); which makes it friendlier to the average user. The former, is a CLI application; which makes it friendlier for scripting and nerds.

I preferred nmcli; since I like remembering stuff in scripts. So, here is how to do it:

nmcli c add type ethernet ifname eth1 con-name private autoconnect yes save yes ip4 192.168.1.10/24
nmcli c modify eth1 ipv4.ignore-auto-routes yes ipv4.ignore-auto-dns yes ipv4.may-fail no

That command will and eth1 with "private" as it's friendly anme and will connect on boot and persist in configuration. We, also, remove auto routes and auto dns; and make it fail loudly!

Check out the man page to add more stuff like default routes and stuff.