Born Again Shell

Red Hat & Fedora Networking Tools

System Configuration Files:
Device Specific Config: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth#
Global Network Config: /etc/sysconfig/network
Name Resolution config: /etc/resolv.conf
Local Name resolution: /etc/hosts

GUI Tools: system-config-network

Document Files: /usr/share/doc/initscripts-{version here}/sysconfig.txt (start typing upto ini and press tab to auto-fill it)

Here's a list of commands that can be entered. For ease of use... make sure you su with the root environment.

ifup, ifup-aliases, ifup-ipv6, ifup-ipx, ifup-plip, ifup-ppp, ifup-routes, ifup-cipcb,
ifdown, ifdown-aliases, ifdown-ipv6, ifdown-ipx, ifdown-ppp, ifdown-post, ifdown-sit, ifdown-sl, ifdown-cipcb

Those are a good list of scripts to use from command line. ifup typically requires that you enter a space, and then a name of an interface

[steve@server ~]sudo /sbin/ifup eth0

 

You can opt to use any of these commands, personally I prefer to modify the file itself.

[steve@server ~]# sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

 

Becomming more and more prodominant in RHEL/Fedora and some linux distributions is the efficiency of the GUI tools. I prefer command line myself, however the GUIs are getting better. With the economy being wonderful... cutbacks are present...

So instead of spending 10 minutes perfecting my network files.... I can spend about 40 seconds configuring the network configurations using system-config-network. It's especially effective if you have about 30 systems to setup in a matter of 8 hours. Messing with command lines for too long can really impact your work performance. If you can spend 30 seconds to finish something perfectly the first time instead of spending 5-10 minutes, configuring something line-by-line, restarting services, and potentially missing one tiny piece of information that ruins the configuration that costs you 5 additional minutes because you have to troubleshoot. Just use the GUI if you can. It may be impressive to show off your command line skills... but if it takes 2 guys to do 10 guys work in 1/4 of the time using an efficiently programmed GUI, guess who's filing unemployment the following week because they were too stubborn to use the GUI.
Do the math...
Static networking on 30 systems, ten guys, 5 minutes with their elite command line skills... It will take them 15 minutes to configuring networking ALONE for these 30 systems. HR is paying these guys 50K a year... That's $0.5M per year in IT personel alone.
Two guys configuring networking can do it in 30 seconds a piece by the GUI, they too take 15 Minutes to configure 30 systems, but the company is saving $400K per year on personnel by keeping just 2 guys that can do it more efficiently. So chin up! It's not about how cool or elite you are, it's how efficient you are.