Reload network settings from ifcfg-* files in openSUSE 13.2

Question

An application I'm working on writes the network settings by updating the /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-* files. Unfortunately these settings are not reloaded because every time I do ifconfig there is no IP on the interface I'm updating.

I tried adding ONBOOT='yes' to that file. Also ifconfig eth0 up. And ifup eth0 but it ends up with a timeout error.

But if I do ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.5/24 for example it works but that IP does not appear in the ifcfg-eth0 file for examples.

So my questions are:

1. By setting the IP using ifconfig, Where is the location of these settings is stored ?

2. In my situation where I write to the ifcfg-eth0 how to reload the settings from that file ?

Note: The machine that I'm working on has no NetworkManager.

Note 2: The machine is on a remote location and I'm connecting to it through SSH using putty.

Note 3: As of this documentation page section 14.3.1.1 the command ifup will bring the interface up and reads its corresponding configuration from ifcfg-* file. Somehow the command ifup eth0 ends up with

wicked: device enp2s0: operation timed out
enp2s0          setup-in-progress

Answer 1

You can do a /etc/init.d/network restart this is usually reentrant and will only change what is updated.

ifconfig is an interactive tool which only relies on what you provide as argument, those arguments are not saved somewhere.

Answer 2

For systemd and later

sudo systemctl restart network