How to configure a static IP address on CentOS 7

Last updated on November 7, 2020 by Dan Nanni

If you want to set up a static IP address on a network interface in CentOS 7, there are several different ways to do it, varying depending on whether or not you want to use Network Manager for that.

Network Manager is a dynamic network control and configuration system that attempts to keep network devices and connections up and active when they are available). CentOS/RHEL 7 comes with Network Manager service installed and enabled by default.

To verify the status of Network Manager service:

$ systemctl status NetworkManager.service

To check which network interface is managed by Network Manager, run:

$ nmcli dev status

If the output of nmcli shows connected for a particular interface (e.g., enp0s3 in this example), it means that the interface is managed by Network Manager. You can easily disable Network Manager for a particular interface, so that you can configure it on your own for a static IP address.

Here are two different ways to assign a static IP address to a network interface on CentOS 7. We will be configuring a network interface named enp0s3.

Configure a Static IP Address without Network Manager

Go to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory, and locate the configuration file of the interface (ifcfg-enp0s3). Create it if not found.

Open the configuration file and edit the following variables:

In the above, NM_CONTROLLED=no indicates that this interface will be set up using this configuration file, instead of being managed by Network Manager service. ONBOOT=yes tells the system to bring up the interface during boot.

Save changes and restart the network service using the following command:

# systemctl restart network.service

Now verify that the interface has been properly configured:

# ip add

Configure a Static IP Address with Network Manager

If you want to use Network Manager to manage the interface, you can use nmtui (Network Manager Text User Interface) which provides a way to configure Network Manager in a terminal environment.

Before using nmtui, first set NM_CONTROLLED=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3.

Now let's install nmtui as follows.

# yum install NetworkManager-tui

Then go ahead and edit the Network Manager configuration of enp0s3 interface:

# nmtui edit enp0s3

The following screen will allow us to manually enter the same information that is contained in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3.

Use the arrow keys to navigate this screen, press Enter to select from a list of values (or fill in the desired values), and finally click OK at the bottom right:

Finally, restart the network service.

# systemctl restart network.service

and you're ready to go.

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