Troubleshooting
Problem
How to determine the number of network cards on a Digital Unix (OSF1) machine.
Resolving The Problem
INTRODUCTION
You may need to find the IP address or addresses for your Digital Unix (OSF1) system, but may not know whether the system contains more than one Network Interface Card (NIC).
METHOD
On Digital Unix (OSF1) systems, the command ifconfig supports an option (-a) to list all of the interfaces on the machine. The output of ifconfig -a varies among operating systems, but should include the IP address of any Network Interface Card (NIC) on the machine.
The interface name will be a 3 to 4 character indicator like hme0, en0 or lc1. Each entry will always begin with the interface name and a colon. This will usually be followed by a set of flags. The flag LOOPBACK indicates that the interface is the local loop back interface and not an actual NIC. Somewhere in the entry for an NIC there is a keyword of inet followed by an IP address. This is the IP address of the interface.
Execute ifconfig -a and look for entries with IP addresses that are not 127.0.0.1. The IP addresses are preceded by inet.
Note: Some systems that support IP version 6 (IPv6) will have two interfaces for each NIC, one for IPv6 and the other for IP version 4 (IPv4). The IPv6 interface will not have an inet parameter, instead it will have an inet6 parameter that will not look like an IP address. Instead of decimal numbers separated by periods an IPv6 address is made up of hexadecimal numbers separated by colons.
Examples:
Output from an Digital Unix (OSF1) machine:
The output is for a machine with only one Network Interface Card (NIC). Notice that even though there is only one NIC, there are 3 interfaces. The lo0 interface is for the local loop back. You can tell this by looking at the inet (IP address) of 127.0.0.1 and also by the LOOPBACK flag.
The real NIC is tu0 and the IP address is given in the inet value (109.25.146.121).
$ /usr/sbin/ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=100c89<UP,LOOPBACK,NOARP,MULTICAST,SIMPLEX,NOCHECKSUM>
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 ipmtu 4096
sl0: flags=10<POINTOPOINT>
tu0: flags=c63<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,MULTICAST,SIMPLEX>
inet 109.25.146.121 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 109.25.146.255 ipmtu 1500
Finding ifconfig
The ifconfig command may not be in your default PATH. Look in the following directories:
- /usr/bin
- /etc
- /usr/etc
- /sbin
- /usr/sbin
You can still use it by simply including the full path to the ifconfig file on the command line. If you cannot find ifconfig, check the man page for ifconfig or use the find command.
For more information, check with your system administrator or the operating system documentation.
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Document Information
Modified date:
20 January 2022
UID
swg21187826