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After substantial research I still haven't found an answer to this query, how can I modify the command 'ifconfig' to show my computer's MAC address?

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    Show us the output of ifconfig for you machine. The 'HWaddr' field will be your MAC address. Dont forget to run as root. – jc__ Dec 7 '16 at 15:08
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    Or you can use ip link to show the MAC address. – Johan Myréen Dec 7 '16 at 15:10
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    What OS? ifconfig shows the ether or lladdr on both Mac OS X and OpenBSD. – thrig Dec 7 '16 at 15:26
  • as @jc__ mentioned - show us the output of ifconfig -a, (and ip addr if available) and we can help you better. MAYBE after looking at the output of this command (these commands) you will be able to answer your own question! – Michael Felt Dec 7 '16 at 17:03
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    @NathanShoesmith It went alright, I'm doing my last hour right now. How long have you got left? – Tom Scott Feb 27 '17 at 15:27
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The command that you want on MacOS, FreeBSD, and TrueOS is:

  • ifconfig -a link

OpenBSD's ifconfig doesn't have this.

Further reading

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First, your computer doesn't have a MAC address. Your network card has a MAC address. So if you have a wireless card and an Ethernet card, you'll have two MAC addresses.

On Linux, either of these commands will show you the MACs of all network cards in your machine:

ifconfig | grep ether
ip link

ifconfig is deprecated on Linux, so you should use ip.

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  • Just as a nit, I recall at least some Sun machines that had a MAC address built into the machine, that was used on all interfaces – infixed Dec 7 '16 at 16:36
  • Is ifconfig still deprecated`It works like a charm. – Timo May 3 at 7:19
  • @Timo Yes, it was deprecated 5 years ago and it is still now. ip is much more powerful. – dr_ May 9 at 17:30
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For many linux systems ipconfig doesn't show the mac anymore. If that is the case for you, try:

ip -a link

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Instead of using ifconfig, you can use ip command.

ip -brief link will show following output.

lo               UNKNOWN        00:00:00:00:00:00 <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> 
enp1s0           DOWN           xx:6a:64:43:d5:xx <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> 
wlp2s0           UP             xx:d1:6b:f2:03:xx <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> 
docker0          UP             xx:42:33:81:52:xx <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> 
vethf34394f@if13 UP             xx:79:65:3e:e0:xx <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> 
phy0.mon         UNKNOWN        xx:d1:6b:f2:03:xx <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP>
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This worked for me:

dmesg | grep -oE 'mac=.*\w+' | cut -b '5-'
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