This tutorial will explain how to switch back networking
from NetPlan/CloudInit on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux to the – now already obsolete – networking managed via /etc/network/interfaces
.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to revert to eth0..n network naming convention
- How to install
ifupdown
- How to remove CloudInit
- How to enable networking daemon
Switching back from NetPlan/CloudInit to the now obsolete networking daemon is not supported nor recommended as you might end up with a broken system. It has been obsolete now for multiple Ubuntu versions.

Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
---|---|
System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
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 |
How to switch back networking to /etc/network/interfaces on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions
- The first thing we need to do is open a command line terminal and execute the following commands to install the appropriate tools to configure network interfaces.
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ifupdown net-tools
- Next, change from current
enp0s3
to old network interfaces naming conventioneth0
. To do so, with root permissions open the/etc/default/grub
configuration file.$ sudo nano /etc/default/grub
- Inside of this file, change the following line.
FROM: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" TO: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0"
Edit Grub boot to change to old network interfaces naming convention eg. eth0 - Save your changes and exit the file. Once ready update Grub with this command:
$ sudo update-grub
- Reboot your system for the new changes to take effect:
$ sudo reboot
- As root or any administrative user edit the
/etc/network/interfaces
file and seteth0
network interface to obtain the IP address from DHCP:source /etc/network/interfaces.d/* # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp
Check this article if you need to set your network interface to a static IP address.
- Restart eth0 interface:
$ sudo ifdown --force eth0 $ sudo ifup eth0
NOTE
Network restart via/etc/init.d/networking
is not functional. To restart your network use theifdown
andifup
commands as shown above.
- At this stage you should have your
eth0
configured. Useifconfig
command to check the networking interface configuration:$ ifconfig
- First disable and stop Configure DNS resolution to eg.
8.8.8.8
(Google’s DNS server) nameserver:
$ sudo unlink /etc/resolv.conf $ sudo echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 >> /etc/resolv.conf
- Let’s perform some cleanup. Remove cloud init package:
$ sudo dpkg -P cloud-init $ sudo rm -fr /etc/cloud/
- Disable and stop systemd-resolved service:
$ sudo systemctl disable --now systemd-resolved
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to switch back to the old networking
from NetPlan/CloudInit on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. This was the old way to manage networking on Linux systems, but has since become obsolete. This is a nice way to bring back the simplicity of networking
to your modern Ubuntu 22.04 system.