How to configure static IP address on AlmaLinux

When it comes to IP addresses on AlmaLinux, you have two main options for how you configure your network interfaces. You can either obtain an IP address automatically with DHCP, or configure the system to use a static IP address, which never changes.

In this guide, we’ll show how to configure a static IP address on AlmaLinux. This can be done either through GUI or command line, and we’ll be going over both methods. Once a static IP address is configured, it won’t change again unless you manually change the IP address later, or turn DHCP on. You can follow this guide whether you’ve migrated from CentOS to AlmaLinux or have performed a normal AlmaLinux installation.

DID YOU KNOW?
You can also configure your DHCP server (or router) to assign your AlmaLinux system a static IP address. This means that your system would still use DHCP, but the server or router will reserve the same IP for the MAC address of your computer’s network interface. Instructions for this will vary, depending on your network environment and DHCP server.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to configure a static IP address via GNOME GUI
How to set a static IP address by directly editing an interface file
How to set a static IP address using the nmcli utility
How to set a static IP address using nmtui

Configuring a static IP address on AlmaLinux

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	AlmaLinux
Software	N/A
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the `sudo` command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of `sudo` command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Configure static IP address via GUI

If you’re running the default GNOME GUI on AlmaLinux, you can follow the steps below to configure a static IP address.

First, click on the top right taskbar area of the GNOME desktop to open the network settings menu.

Open network settings from top right corner of GNOME desktop

Next, open the settings for the network interface you wish to configure.

Open the network settings of the interface that you want to configure

Click on the IPv4 or IPv6 tab, depending on which type of IP you want to configure. Then, select “manual” and fill in your desired IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. Optionally, you can also fill in a DNS server. Click “apply” when you’re done.

Fill out the desired network information for the interface

Configure static IP address via command line

There are several methods we can use to configure a static IP address on AlmaLinux via command line. Which one you choose will mostly boil down to personal preference. Follow along with the step by step instructions for any of the methods below.

Identifying our network interface

The first thing we want to do is find the interface that we want to modify. To list all the interfaces on our system, we can use the ip a command:

$ ip a
...
2: ens160: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:14:b7:83 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.137.132/24 brd 192.168.137.255 scope global dynamic ens160
       valid_lft 1299sec preferred_lft 1299sec
    inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe14:b783/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

On our test machine, the interface we’re interested in working with is ens160. Take note of your interface name, as you’ll need to know it when following along with the steps below.

Method 1 – modifying interface configuration file manually

For each network interface managed by the NetworkManager daemon, a configuration file is created inside the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory. The name of the file is composed by the ifcfg- prefix plus the name of the interface. If we inspect the file related to our NIC, we can see its actual setup:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens160

Our network interface boot protocol is currently configured for DHCP

In the screenshot above, you can see that the BOOTPROTO option is set to DHCP. This option sets the protocol to use at boot to set the IP address of the interface. The possible options to use are:

none – No protocol should be used
bootp – Use the bootp protocol
dhcp – Use the dhcp protocol

Since we want to set a static IPv4 address, we want to change the value of BOOTPROTO to none, and configure our IP, route prefix (a.k.a. subnet mask), gateway and DNS server statically. We can do that by editing the file with the following lines.

BOOTPROTO="none"
IPADDR=192.168.122.66
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=192.168.122.1
DNS1=192.168.122.1

Fill out your desired network settings in the interface file

In this example, we’ve set our static IP to 192.168.122.66 and set both our gateway and DNS server to 192.168.122.1. Now, to make our changes to take effect, we’ll restart the network.

# nmcli connection down ens160 && nmcli connection up ens160

Method 2 – using nmcli

Nmcli is a command line tool used to control NetworkManager. We can use it to change network settings for a specific interface. In the following commands, we use the nmcli utility to set an IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server on our ens160 interface.

# nmcli connection modify ens160 IPv4.address 192.168.122.66/24
# nmcli connection modify ens160 IPv4.gateway 192.168.122.1
# nmcli connection modify ens160 IPv4.dns 192.168.122.1

Finally, we set the method to manual to avoid using any other boot protocol for the interface. This command sets the BOOTPROTO option to none in the interface configuration file.

# nmcli connection modify ens160 IPv4.method manual

Method 3 – using nmtui

Other than changing the parameters of a network interface by modifying its file manually or by using the nmcli utility, we can also control NetworkManager by using a text user interface. To launch it we just invoke nmtui in our terminal.

# nmtui

Choose to edit a connection

Select “Edit a connection” and then the name of the interface you want to configure. Then, you can proceed in changing the desired values. For example:

Fill out the desired network information for the interface

Once you’re done with the configuration, select “OK” and press enter. You will be taken back to the interface selection menu. Now you can select “back”, and then choose “quit” to exit. To apply the settings, we need to reload the interface connection.

# nmcli connection down ens160 && nmcli connection up ens160

Closing Thoughts

In this guide, we saw several methods for configuring a static IP address on AlmaLinux. This involved GNOME GUI, editing interface configuration files manually, using nmcli, and using nmtui. As you can see, AlmaLinux gives us no shortage of options for configuring static IPs. All methods are equally effective, and the one you use should depend on your situation and preference – whether it’s for GUI, text files, commands, or an ncurses interface.