How do I find out the MAC address of my Linux or FreeBSD system?

Q. Can you tell me how can I find out MAC address under Linux or FreeBSD server?

A. A mac address is acronym for media access control address, is a unique address assigned to almost all-networking hardware such as Ethernet cards, router etc. Most layer 2 network protocols use one of three numbering spaces managed by the IEEE: MAC-48, EUI-48, and EUI-64, which are designed to be globally unique. (see mac address at wikipedia for more information).

Following command work with Linux and other UNIX oses:

ifconfig command

Ifconfig is used to configure the kernel-resident network interfaces.

In order to find out MAC address of system you can use ifconfig command as follows:
$ /sbin/ifconfig | grep HWaddr
Output:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0F:EA:91:04:07

OR

$ /sbin/ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0F:EA:91:04:07
        inet addr:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
        inet6 addr: fe80::20f:eaff:fe91:407/64 Scope:Link
        UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
        RX packets:60400 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
        TX packets:109216 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
        collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
        RX bytes:69273219 (66.0 MiB)  TX bytes:14285799 (13.6 MiB)
        Interrupt:18 Base address:0xc000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
        inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
        inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
        UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
        RX packets:3869 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
        TX packets:3869 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
        collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
        RX bytes:396498 (387.2 KiB)  TX bytes:396498 (387.2 KiB)

OR as a root user type following command:

# grep eth0 /var/log/dmesg

eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xc000, 00:0f:ea:91:04:07, IRQ 18
eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1

FreeBSD example

# ifconfig
Output:

lnc0: flags=108843 mtu 1500
        inet 74.xx.yy.zzz netmask 0xfffffff0 broadcast 74.xx.yyy.zzz
        ether 00:0c:29:b8:92:8b
plip0: flags=108810 mtu 1500
lo0: flags=8049 mtu 16384
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3 
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000

See also:

• Iptables mac address based filtering