• The Physical Address: This is a 12-digit number also known as the MAC Address of your Network Adapter. The Transport Name: This is the location of the Network Adapter. If you see Multiple MAC Addresses listed, you may want to run another command to see more details. In the Command Prompt, type the following command and press the Enter key.
• The quickest way to find the MAC address is through the command prompt. Open the command prompt. Search 'Command Prompt' in the taskbar, or if you have an older version of Windows, you can.

In this article, I will take you through different ways to List/Get/Display/Find MAC Address in Linux. You might be aware of Ethernet Card/Network Card/NIC Controller which works at Network level and is responsible for communicating with other network devices in a Network Topology. It is used in Layer-2 Communication. You can find the usage of MAC address in wide range of Network Devices currently in use. This is typically in-line with IEEE 802 Network technologies.

What is MAC Address

MAC is abbreviated as Media Access Control. It is a unique 48 bit(6-byte) address assigned to a Network Interface. It is almost used in all the Network Devices which has network controller in it. It will always show in this form 00:07:Y7:1C:6L:03.

Find MAC Address in Linux

Type 'arp -a' in the command prompt. This lists a number of MAC addresses with the associated IP addresses. Since you have the MAC address, scroll down the list to find the associated IP address. The MAC address is shown in the 'Physical Address' column with the IP address in the 'Internet Address' column. An example of a table record is in Step 4.

Also Read:25 Useful Linux SS Command Examples to Monitor Network Connections

Method 1: How to find MAC Address in Linux Using ifconfig command

If you want to check MAC Address of all the network interfaces in Linux using our traditional ifconfig command then you need to use ifconfig -a command as shown below.

NOTE:

Method 2: How to find an ethernet MAC Address in Linux Using ifconfig command

If you want to check the MAC Address of a specific network interface using ifconfig command then you need to use network interface name with ifconfig command as shown below. Here we are checking MAC Address of interface enp0s3 using ifconfig enp0s3 command.

NOTE:

Method 3: How to find MAC Address in Linux Using ip addr sh command

If you want to check the MAC address of all the network interfaces then you need to simply use ip addr sh command and check the MAC address from ether field as shown below.

Mac Id Windows 10

Method 4: How to find an ethernet MAC Address in Linux using ip addr sh command

If you want to check the MAC address of some specific network interface then you need to use the interface name with ip addr sh command and check the MAC address from ether field as shown below. In this example we are checking MAC address of enp0s3 network interface.

Method 5: How to find MAC Address in Linux Using ip link show command

If you want to check the MAC address of all the network interfaces then you can use another useful ip link show command and check the MAC address from link/ether field as shown below.

Method 6: How to find an ethernet MAC Address in Linux using ip link show command

If you want to check the MAC address of some specific network interface then you need to use the interface name with ip link show command and check the MAC address from ether field as shown below. In this example we are checking MAC address of enp0s3 network interface.

Method 7: How to find MAC Address in Linux using ethtool command

You can also use another useful linux tool called ethtool to find MAC address in Linux as shown below. Here I am checking MAC address of my ethernet card enp0s3 using ethtool command hence you need to mention your Interface name before running below command.

Method 8: How to find MAC Address in Linux using Regex with ifconfig command

You can use a simple grep regular expression with ifconfig command to find the MAC Address of an ethernet card in Linux as shown below. Like above example, Here I am using regular expression on my System enp0s3 interface so you need to change and mention your interface name instead of enp0s3 before running below command.

Method 9: How to find MAC Address in Linux using SYS Files

If you want to check MAC address in Linux using SYS files you need to check network address file using below cat command. As mentioned below SYS file is a text file so its contents can always be seen through Linux cat command.

Method 10: How to find MAC Address in Linux using AWK Regex with ifconfig command

You can also use AWK regular expression with ifconfig command to find MAC Address in Linux as shown below. Here we are grepping ether keyword from ifconfig command and then piping to awk to get first and second column output separated by tab.

Method 11: How to find MAC Address in Linux using Sed Regex with ifconfig command

Like above example, you can also use Sed Regular expressions with ifconfig command to find MAC Address in Linux as shown below.

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We can find mac address (physical address) of a computer using the command ‘getmac‘. This can be used to get mac address for remote computers also. Below are few examples on how to use this command. It works on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008 operating systems.

Get mac addresses from CMD

Just run the command getmac to get the mac addresses. Find an example below.

This command does not show mac addresses for the network connections which are disabled. You can run ncpa.cpl and check which NICs are disabled. Further, I have received comments that this command does not help identify the mac address for a specific device. For example, if I need to get the mac address for my WiFi card, output of getmac command is not helpful. We can use ipconfig command to deal with this.

Get mac address of a remote computer

We can retrieve the mac addressses for a remote computer using nbtstat command.
Example:

Alternatively, We can run the below command to retrieve the mac addresses of a remote computer.

remote_computer : Full name of the remote computer or IP address
username and password are of the account on the remote computer.

Example:

If you do not want to specify the password, you can skip /p parameter. You will be prompted to enter the password and the command execution will take place after that.

Command For Mac Address In Windows 10

Errors:

How To Find Mac Address On Mac

Using getmac command we can retrieve the mac addresses of the machines running windows OS only. If you try this for a Linux machine you would get the error “The RPC server is unavailable.”

If you provide incorrect password, the command would fail with the error message “Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.”

Command For Mac Address Cmd

Also Read:
Windows CMD commands reference