How to run a startup script automatically after a network interface is up on CentOS

Last updated on October 27, 2020 by Dan Nanni

Sometimes you may want to run a specific command or a custom script right after a given network interface (e.g., eth0) is up. For example, you want to configure interface-specific iptables rules or QoS settings. Follow this guideline to learn how to set up a startup script for a specific network interface on CentOS.

On CentOS, network interface related scripts are found in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. Among them is ifup-post, which is called right after any network interface is brought up online. In this script, you will find the following code snippet toward the end.

#!/bin/sh
if [ -x /sbin/ifup-local ]; then
    /sbin/ifup-local ${DEVICE}

The code snippet means that if there exists a script called ifup-local in /sbin directory, the script gets executed with an interface name argument. On vanilla CentOS system, no such script exists. So in order to run a startup script automatically after a network interface is up, create an executable script /sbin/ifup-local, and put in there any command or script you want to run. For example:

$ sudo vi /sbin/ifup-local

#!/bin/sh
if [[ "$1" == "eth0" ]]
then
    echo "this part will be executed right after eth0 is up."
    echo "so you can put any startup command for eth0 here."
else
    #DO_NOTHING
fi

Finally, make the script executable.

$ sudo chmod +x /sbin/ifup-local

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