Adding and viewing IP addresses on CentOS servers

Expertise level: Easy


(Please follow the steps given below only on a Centos / Fedora.)

  • Login to your server with SSH as root.
  • Go to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory.
cd  /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/


This will produce output similar to the following:


  • Make a copy of ifcfg-eth0 for each IP you wish to add and name them as ifcfg-eth0:0, ifcfg-eth0:1 etc.
cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:0 
cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:1
cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:2
cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:3
cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:4
  • Open each of them and change the fields DEVICE, .IPADDR and NETMASK accordingly.

A sample entry would look like this:

  • Restart the network:
/etc/init.d/network restart

To verify what are the IP addresses assigned to your server, please use the following command:


Adding multiple IP addresses at once:

Navigate to the following folder:


In this folder, create a file named "ifcfg-ethX-range", without the quotes, and replacing X with the ID of the physical interface. For example, if you were using eth0, you would use the following file name:


In the file, enter the following information, modifying the entries as necessary.


A real life example might resemble this:


IPADDR_START means the start of the IP address range
IPADDR_END means the end of the IP address range
CLONENUM_START means the number assigned to the first virtual interface, for example eth0:0 or eth0:1, or eth0:8 as in the above screen capture
NETMASK is for all secondary IP addresses to allow you to use the network and broadcast addresses on your server

After you have created the file, save and quit, and then restart the network service:

/etc/init.d/network restart

For more information on how to manage your network configuration, please feel free to consult the official RedHat documentation site.

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