set static ip address ubuntu 20

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How to set a static ip address in ubuntu.

When static is the way forward.

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What is a static ip address, setting a static ip in ubuntu, set a static ip in ubuntu with the gui, connection convenience, key takeaways.

After gathering your connection name, subnet mask, and default gateway, you can set a static IP address in the terminal using the nmcli command. Or, in the GNOME desktop, open your connection settings and click the + icon, then enter the info for your static IP address there.

Your home network relies on IP addresses to route data between devices, and sometimes on reconnecting to the network a device's address can change. Here's how to give an Ubuntu Linux computer a permanent IP address that survives reboots.

Everything on your network home network, whether it's using a wired connection or Wi-Fi, has an IP address . IP stands for Internet Protocol. An IP address is a sequence of four numbers separated by three dots. Each IP address that is unique within that network.

IP addresses act as numeric labels. Your router uses these labels to send data between the correct devices. Usually, your router assigns IP addresses. It knows which IP addresses are in use and which are free. When a new device connects to the network, it requests an IP address and the router allocates one of the unused IP addresses. This is called DHCP, or dynamic host configuration protocol .

When a device is restarted or powered off and on, it may receive its old IP address once more, or it might be allocated a new IP address. This is normal for DHCP and it doesn't affect the normal running of your network. But if you have a server or some other computer that you need to be able to reach by its IP address, you'll run into problems if its IP address doesn't survive power downs or reboots.

Pinning a specific IP address to a computer is called allocating a static IP address . A static IP address, as its name suggests, isn't dynamic and it doesn't change even if the computer is power-cycled .

Nmcli is the command-line network manager tool , and can be used to change your IP address, configure network devices, and --- relevant to our purposes --- set up a static IP in Ubuntu.

We're demonstrating this technique on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, but it ought to work on any Linux distribution, including Ubuntu 23.04. The nmcli tool was released in 2004, so it should be present on just about any standard distribution.

Let's take a look at the network connections that already exist on the computer. We're using the connection command with the show argument.

nmcli connection show

This displays some information about each connection. We only have a single connection configured.

The output is wider than the terminal window. This is the information that we're shown.

• Name : Our network connection is called "netplan-enp0s3."
• UUID : The universally unique identifier Linux uses to reference this connection internally.
• Type : This is an ethernet connection.
• Device : This connection is using the "enp0s3" network interface. It's the only network card in this computer.

We can use the ip command to discover the IP address this computer is using.

In the output we can see the "enp0s3" entry, and its current IP address, 192.168.86.117. The "/24" is a shorthand way of saying that this network uses a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask . Take a note of this number, we'll need to use it later.

We need to choose the IP address we're going to set as our static IP address. Obviously, you can't use an IP address that is already in use by another device. One safe way to proceed is to use the current IP address assigned to the Ubuntu system. We know for certain that nothing else is using that IP address.

If we want to use a different IP address, try pinging it. We're going to test whether IP address 192.168.86.128 is in use. If everything else on your network uses DHCP and you get no response to the ping command, it should be safe to use.

ping 192.168.86.128

Even if another device had previously used that IP address, it'll be given a new IP address when it next boots up. Nothing responds to the ping requests, so we're clear to go ahead and configure 192.168.86.128 as our new static IP.

We also need to know the IP address of your default gateway , which will usually be your broadband router. We can find this using the ip command and the route option, which we can abbreviate to "r."

The entry that starts with "default" is the route to the default gateway. Its IP address is 192.168.86.1. Now we can start to issue commands to set up our static IP address.

The first command is a long one.

sudo nmcli con add con-name "static-ip" ifname enp0s3 type ethernet ip4 192.168.86.128/24 gw4 192.168.86.1

Taken in small chunks, it's not as bad as it looks. We're using sudo . The nmcli arguments are:

• con : Short for "connection."
• add : We're going to add a connection.
• con-name "static-ip" : The name of our new connection will be "static-ip."
• ifname enp0s3 : The connection will use network interface "enp0s3."
• type ethernet : We're creating an ethernet connection.
• ip4 192.168.86.128/24 : The IP address and subnet mask in classless inter-domain routing notation . This is where you need to use the number you took note of earlier.
• gw4 192.168.86.1 : The IP address of the gateway we want this connection to use.

To make our connection a functioning connection, we need to provide a few more details. Our connection exists now, so we're not adding anything, we're modifying settings, so we use the mod argument. The setting we're changing is the IPv4 DNS settings. 8.8.8.8 is the IP address of Google's primary public DNS server , and 8.8.4.4 is Google's fallback DNS server.

Note that there is a "v" in "ipv4." In the previous command the syntax was "ip4" without a "v." The "v" needs to be used when you're modifying settings, but not when adding connections.

nmcli con mod "static-ip" ipv4.dns "8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4"

To make our IP address static, we need to change the method which the IP address obtains its value. The default is "auto" which is the setting for DHCP. We need to set it to "manual."

nmcli con mod "static-ip" ipv4.method manual

And now we can start or "bring up" our new connection.

nmcli con up "static-ip" ifname enp0s3

We didn't get any error messages which is great. Lets use nmcli to look at our connections once more.

nmcli con show

Here's the output:

Our static-ip connection is active and using device "enp0s3." The existing connection "netplan-enp0s3" is no longer associated with a physical network interface because we've pinched "enp0s3" from it.

Click the icons at the far-right end of the system bar to show the system menu, then click on the "Wired Connected" menu option. If you're using a wireless connection, instead click the name of your Wi-Fi network.

The available connections are displayed. A dot indicates which is in use. Click the "Wired Settings" or "Wi-Fi Settings" menu option. The details of the active connection are displayed.

If you followed our previous instructions the new connection will be the active connection. We can see our new "static-ip" connection has the IP address, default gateway, and DNS servers that we set for it.

To create a new connection using the "Settings" application, click the " + " icon on the "Networks" page, above the list of wired connections.

A dialog appears. We need to provide a name for our new static IP connection.

We're calling our new connection "static-2." Click the "IPv4" tab.

Select the "Manual" radio button, and complete the "Address", "Netmask", and "Gateway" fields. Also complete the DNS field, and then click the green "Apply" button. Note the comma between the DNS entries.

Our new connection is listed in the "Wired" connections pane.

You can swap between the available connections by clicking directly on their names.

If you want to modify a connection after you create it, click the cog icon. In this case, we'll enter the settings for the "static-ip" connection.

A dialog box opens. Click on the "IPv4" tab.

Because we set our new IP address to be static, the "Manual" radio button is selected. You could change this back to DHCP by selecting the "Automatic (DHCP)" radio button, and clicking the green "Apply" button.

Using the nmcli command or the GNOME desktop and apps, you can hop between network connections very easily and very quickly.

It's more convenient to have a selection of connection profiles and move between them as you need to, rather than to have one that you keep editing. If something goes horribly wrong with the connection you're editing or adding, you can always fall back on one of the existing connections.

How to Configure Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04

Usually, when a client system connects to a network via WiFi or an ethernet cable, it automatically picks an IP address from the router. This is made possible through the DHCP server which auto-assigns IP addresses to clients from a pool of addresses.

The drawback with DHCP is that once the DHCP lease time has lapsed, the IP address of a system changes to a different one, and this leads to a disconnection in case the system was used for a particular service such as a file server. For this reason, you may want to set a static IP address so that it never changes even when the lease time is up.

In this guide, you will learn how to configure a static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04 server and desktop.

Network Configuration

Ubuntu uses the NetworkManager daemon for managing network configuration. You can configure a static IP either graphically or on the command line.

For this guide, we will focus on setting a static IP address using both the GUI and on the command line, and here is the IP configuration:

This information will be different for you, so replace the values accordingly according to your subnet.

On this page

• Set Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop
• Set Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 Server

How to Set Static IP Address On Ubuntu Desktop

To get started, Launch ‘ Settings ’ from the application menu as shown.

On the window that appears, click on the ‘ Network ’ tab at the left sidebar and then hit the gear icon on the network interface that you wish to configure. In my case, I’m configuring my wired interface.

In the new window that appears, your interface’s network settings will be displayed as shown. By default, the IP address is set to use DHCP to automatically pick an IP address from the Router or any other DHCP server.

In our case, the current IP address assigned is 192.168.2.104 .

Now select the IPv4 tab to start setting the static IP address. As you can see, the IP addressing is set to Automatic (DHCP) by default.

Click on the ‘ Manual ’ option and new address fields will be displayed. Fill out your preferred static IP address, netmask, and default gateway.

The DNS is also set to automatic. To manually configure the DNS, click on the toggle to turn off Automatic DNS. Then provide your preferred DNS entries separated by a comma as shown.

Once all is done, click on the ‘ Apply ’ button at the top right corner of the window. For the changes to apply, restart the network interface by clicking on the toggle to disable it and enable it again.

Once again, click on the gear icon to reveal the new IP configuration as shown.

You can also confirm the IP address on the terminal by running the ifconfig or ip addr command .

To confirm the DNS servers, run the command:

How to Set Static IP Address on Ubuntu Server Using Netplan

We have seen how we can configure a static IP address graphically on Ubuntu 20.04 desktop. The other option is configuring a static IP address on the terminal using Netplan .

Developed by Canonical, Netplan is a command-line utility used to configure networking on modern Ubuntu distributions. Netplan makes use of YAML files to configure network interfaces. You can configure an interface to acquire an IP dynamically using DHCP protocol or set a static IP.

Open your terminal and head over to the /etc/netplan directory. You will find a YAML configuration file which you will use to configure the IP address.

In my case the YAML file is 01-network-manager-all.yaml with the default settings as shown.

For the Ubuntu server, the YAML file is 00-installer-config.yaml and these are the default settings.

To configure a static IP, copy and paste the configuration below. Be mindful of the spacing in the YAML file.

Next, save the file and run the netplan command below to save the changes.

You can thereafter confirm the IP address of your network interface using the ifconfig command .

This wraps up today’s article. We hope you are now in a position to configure a static IP address on your Ubuntu 20.04 desktop & server system.

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21 Comments

DHCP is that once the DHCP lease time has lapsed, the IP address of a system changes to a different one, and this leads to a disconnection in case the system was used for a particular service such as a file server.

For this reason, you may want to set a static IP address so that it never changes even when the lease time is up.

Thanks for documenting this. However, after a reboot, I am left with the old IP address (DHCP). Guess there is another process that overrules the yaml file, but what??

Hey Pieter, that’s awkward. Ideally, the IP should not change since it’s a static IP. Did you try out both procedures. I’m just curious.

I had a static IP in the yaml file and this does not get an update if you adjust its IP via.

netplan ip a prior to gui adjustments gui DHCP => ip DHCP Gui static ip b => ip a It seems that netplan is not updated via GUI adjustments Enjoy the coffee ‘)

Could this lead to a clash of IP addresses between two computers on the same network? Another computer (computer B) which gets its IP address dynamically comes online when the computer with the static IP (computer A) is offline.

The dhcp server could assign the IP to computer B. Subsequently, when computer A comes online and tries to join the network there would be an IP conflict and both computers could end up not being able to connect to network resources or perform other network operations.

In some routers, this can be managed by restricting the range of IP addresses that the router can dynamically assign. Many routers don’t have that option.

To avoid the potential of such conflicts, I assign static IP addresses on the dhcp server to computers on the network based on the MAC addresses of their NICs.

I would appreciate your thoughts on how to prevent IP conflicts when the network is made of some devices that have static in and others have dynamic IP addresses assigned to them. This scenario is more common today where network devices like smart phones, tablets, smart TVs, and media streaming devices connecting to the network.

Managing IP addresses by MAC addresses is a pain and it would be very helpful if there is an easier way to prevent IP conflicts.

Your concern is very valid. To avoid a conflict in IP address assignment in a network, as you have just described, consider reserving the IP assigned to the server on the router. Say for example, if you want to assign Server A an IP of 172.16.0.100, simply login into your router and reserve the IP address. This prevents the IP from being made available to client PCs & other network devices via the DHCP protocol.

Ideally, before the static assignment, proper mapping of your network is advised so as to know which device is using which IP address. You can use nifty tools like Nmap to scan your network to get to know which IP addresses are in use to avoid assigning a duplicate IP statically on the server.

I hope this answers your question.

Wonderful post. Very simple and to the point. Thank you!!!! Keep it up!!!

Thank you very much Jaidev Shah. Keep it Tecmint.

Hi, why when we use the desktop method, the interfaces file does not get updated ? Where does the desktop tool write the information ?

That’s actually a very interesting question and I did not think about it before. I just configured a static IP on one of my Ubuntu boxes and used grep from /etc/ folder recursively to search for that IP. The IP address was written in:

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Wired\ connection\ 1

So if you need to look where the desktop tool has written your settings, you can look at:

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/

Hey Marin, thanks for your contribution. I hadn’t actually seen it from that angle. Quite interesting I must say.

Great article just wondering about this part: “Remember to replace “enp0s3” with the name of your network adapter??? what do u mean by this? do you mean we should not change this name enp0s3 or changed with our network adapter? Cheers

Means, you should change “enp0s3” with your network adapter name for example, eth0 or eth1..

Sorry for my english, I would put a secondary IP in the same interface, like old versions (eth0 192.168.1.100… eth0:1 10.10.0.100) I know how to do it in the old versions, but in version 15.10, they have changed the commands. Can you help me?

Hello Nikon,

As the answer of this question is too long for the comment section, I would recommend you to submit your question to our Linuxsay discussion forum, where we will gladly provide more details:

http://linuxsay.com/

Where do the Nameserver numbers obtained? Elaborate on “Make sure to use your own settings depending on the network to which you are connected to.”

Can you please expand on this? IMPORTANT NOTE: For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be using the following settings:

IP Address: 192.168.0.100 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 192.168.0.1 Nameserver: 8.8.8.8 Nameserver: 8.8.4.4 Make sure to use your own settings depending on the network to which you are connected to. Where do you obtain the Nameserver numbers?

This depends on few things:

If your machine is connected to a router, you should see the settings in there.

If you are plugging your ISP’s internet cable directly to your computer (i.e no router, modem etc), you should use your ISP’s settings.

I want 1st IP by DHCP and 2nd static but, in Ubuntu 15.10 mi interface isn’t eth0 it is eno1 and if I put eno1:1 don’t works.

Actually the init script does exactly that – it calls systemctl. You can see it in the screenshot:

“restarting networking (via systemctl): networking service”

Both scripts do the same.

Why not use systemd to restart networking directly?

`systemctl restart network`

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How to Assign Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

It is always recommended to assign a static IP address to a Linux system because static ip address will be persistent across the reboots. Recently canonical has released its stable operating system “ Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) ” for both desktop and servers. In this article we will demonstrate how to assign a static ip address on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server and desktop.

Assign Static IP Address On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server

In Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server, network configuration is controlled and managed by netplan utility. But during the installation, cloud-init configure a dynamic ip to interface on server if the dhcp server is available. so, to configure a static ip, first we must make sure and confirm that network interface is not managed by cloud-init.

Open cloud-init file “ /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/subiquity-disable-cloudinit-networking.cfg ” and make sure entry “ network: {config: disabled} ” is there. In case this entry is missing, then add it manually.

Use “ ip addr show ” command from the console to view ip address,

As we can see above, a dynamic ip is assigned automatically on interface card “ enp0s3 ”. So, to make this ip address static, we must edit the netplan configuration file “ /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml ”.

Above are the default entries, which shows that interface “ enp0s3 ” is getting the IP from DHCP server. As it is an yaml file, so while making the changes in the file we must follow correct indentation. Add the following lines to the yaml file,

save and close the file.

Run the following “ netplan apply ” command to make the above changes into the effect.

Now run “ ip addr show ” and “ ip route show ” command to view ip address and route details.

Output of above command would look like below,

Perfect, output confirms that Static IP has been assigned successfully on interface ‘ enp0s3 ‘. Even if we reboot the server, this ip address will be consistent.

Now, let’s move to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktop.

Assign Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Desktop

Network configuration in Ubuntu desktop is controlled by network manager. Configuring a static ip address on Ubuntu 20.04 desktop is very easy. Login to your desktop environment and click on network icon and then choose wired settings .

In the next window, Click on ‘ gear box ’ icon under wired option,

In the next window, Choose IPV4 Tab and then select Manual and specify the IP details like IP address, netmask, gateway and DNS Server IP.

Click on Apply to save these changes and we must disable and enable interface once to assign the ip address to interface.

Once you enable and disable the interface then static IP should be assigned to the interface, we can verify by looking at the Details Tab from Wired Settings .

Perfect, above confirms that static ip address has been assigned to the interface successfully. This conclude the article; I hope these steps help you to configure static IP Address on your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server and desktop. Please do share your feedback and comments.

12 thoughts on “How to Assign Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS”

Thanks for the excellent article, It is always recommended to assign a static IP address to a Linux system because static ip address will be persistent across the reboots. that is understood. where exactly i see the advantage of assigning static ip address to my linux desktop? How circled point 3, 4, 5 in IPv4 tab are assigned, especially entries 192.168.1.210 and 255.255.255.0. If these two are explained, then it will be great.

ok, ifconfig and netstat -r gives netmask and gateway. but still i would like to know the advantage of assigning static ip address to my linux desktop preferably with example applications. thanks.

Imagine you open a network service on your linux desktop, let’s assume it is a web server running on port 80, and you want to expose this service to the internet.

You would have to add a port translation rule into your internet box to forward connections on your public ip to your linux desktop system. And the configuration in the box is static, you need a fixed and consistent ip addr on your internal network.

You achieve that either with static ip that you assign by yourself, or by configuring the dhcp server inside your internet box to reserve an ip associated to your linux destop mac address.

Hi Narayan, If your desktop is connected to the modem or a switch where DHCP server is configured with subnet “192.168.1.0/24”. So when your desktop tries to get ip from DHCP server then it will always picks one ip from the pool “192.168.1.2 – 192.168.1.254” . But if you want to map a fixed ip to desktop then you can assign that IP as static.

$ip addr show just hung my SSH session. I don’t know how long it will take to time out.

nice but i cannot follow your tutorial cause i just using phone Hehe

Thank You Very Much My Problem has fixed now All credit goes to you 🙂

Hello, I’m running ubuntu server 20.04 on a hyper-v environment, i did all steps in the page, but when I want to run update, can´t connect to internet. Please help.

I got the same problem. I’m running ubuntu 20.04 on virtualbox. I fixed it by changing the “gateway4: 192.168.1.1” to “gateway4: 192.168.0.1”. Flipping the 1 to a 0, or to the same number as the one in my own ip in that place. Happy debugging!

Thanks for the good informations…

Useful article. I am using usb broadband modem and for my case it was also useful to use such command to find out default gateway $ ip route | grep default It has given: default via 10.1.1.3

I saw this link at askubuntu.com I was having issue statically assigning IP in ubuntu and after following your steps it worked. Thanks so much and keep it up

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Setting a Static IP in Ubuntu – Linux IP Address Tutorial

In most network configurations, the router DHCP server assigns the IP address dynamically by default. If you want to ensure that your system IP stays the same every time, you can force it to use a static IP.

That's what we will learn in this article. We will explore two ways to set a static IP in Ubuntu.

Static IP addresses find their use in the following situations:

• Configuring port forwarding.
• Configuring your system as a server such as an FTP server, web server, or a media server.

Pre-requisites:

To follow this tutorial you will need the following:

• Ubuntu installation, preferably with a GUI.
• sudo rights as we will be modifying system configuration files.

How to Set a Static IP Using the Command Line

In this section, we will explore all the steps in detail needed to configure a static IP.

Step 1: Launch the terminal

You can launch the terminal using the shortcut Ctrl+ Shift+t .

Step 2: Note information about the current network

We will need our current network details such as the current assigned IP, subnet mask, and the network adapter name so that we can apply the necessary changes in the configurations.

Use the command below to find details of the available adapters and the respective IP information.

The output will look something like this:

For my network, the current adapter is eth0 . It could be different for your system

• Note the current network adapter name

As my current adapter is eth0 , the below details are relevant.

It is worth noting that the current IP 172.23.199.129 is dynamically assigned. It has 20 bits reserved for the netmask. The broadcast address is 172.23.207.255 .

• Note the subnet

We can find the subnet mask details using the command below:

Select the output against your adapter and read it carefully.

Based on the class and subnet mask, the usable host IP range for my network is: 172.23.192.1 - 172.23.207.254 .

Subnetting is a vast topic. For more info on subnetting and your usable IP ranges, check out this article .

Step 3: Make configuration changes

Netplan is the default network management tool for the latest Ubuntu versions. Configuration files for Netplan are written using YAML and end with the extension .yaml .

Note: Be careful about spaces in the configuration file as they are part of the syntax. Without proper indentation, the file won't be read properly.

• Go to the netplan directory located at /etc/netplan .

ls into the /etc/netplan directory.

If you do not see any files, you can create one. The name could be anything, but by convention, it should start with a number like 01- and end with .yaml . The number sets the priority if you have more than one configuration file.

I'll create a file named 01-network-manager-all.yaml .

Let's add these lines to the file. We'll build the file step by step.

The top-level node in a Netplan configuration file is a network: mapping that contains version: 2 (means that it is using network definition version 2).

Next, we'll add a renderer, that controls the overall network. The renderer is systemd-networkd by default, but we'll set it to NetworkManager .

Now, our file looks like this:

Next, we'll add ethernets and refer to the network adapter name we looked for earlier in step#2. Other device types supported are modems: , wifis: , or bridges: .

As we are setting a static IP and we do not want to dynamically assign an IP to this network adapter, we'll set dhcp4 to no .

Now we'll specify the specific static IP we noted in step #2 depending on our subnet and the usable IP range. It was 172.23.207.254 .

Next, we'll specify the gateway, which is the router or network device that assigns the IP addresses. Mine is on 192.168.1.1 .

Next, we'll define nameservers . This is where you define a DNS server or a second DNS server. Here the first value is   8.8.8.8 which is Google's primary DNS server and the second value is 8.8.8.4 which is Google's secondary DNS server. These values can vary depending on your requirements.

Step 4: Apply and test the changes

We can test the changes first before permanently applying them using this command:

If there are no errors, it will ask if you want to apply these settings.

Now, finally, test the changes with the command ip a and you'll see that the static IP has been applied.

How to Set a Static IP Using the GUI

It is very easy to set a static IP through the Ubuntu GUI/ Desktop. Here are the steps:

• Search for settings .
• Click on either Network or Wi-Fi tab, depending on the interface you would like to modify.
• To open the interface settings, click on the gear icon next to the interface name.
• Select “Manual” in the IPV4 tab and enter your static IP address, Netmask and Gateway.
• Click on the Apply button.

• Verify by using the command ip a

In this article, we covered two methods to set the static IP in Ubuntu. I hope you found the article useful.

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How to Configure Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04

A static or fixed IP address is an IP address that does not change. Whether you reboot your device or home router, your device with a static IP address will get the same IP address. The opposite of a static IP address is the dynamic IP address. A device that does not have a static IP address will get a dynamic IP address assigned by the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server, and it may change from time to time.

By default, a device connected to your home router whether it’s using cable or connected through WiFi will most likely get a dynamic IP address. And, if you use your managed Ubuntu VPS also as an FTP server of web server you would want to configure a static IP address for it, so you can reach the server using the same IP address. In this tutorial, we will show you how to configure a static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04.

Configure Static IP Address on Ubuntu Server 20.04

In Ubuntu server 20.04, the network configuration is managed by a utility called NetPlan. NetPlan is a new network configuration tool introduced in Ubuntu 17.10 to manage network settings. And during the Ubuntu 20.04 server installation, cloud-init will configure a dynamic IP address for the network interface on the server if the DHCP server is available.

First of all, we need to check what is the ethernet interface card that we want to configure the IP address for, we can run ip a or ip link command to see it. In this example, the interface that we are going to configure the static IP is ‘ens33’.

To proceed with configuring a static IP address on Ubuntu server 20.04, we have to make sure that cloud-init does not manage the network interface. To do it, let’s open cloud-init file at /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/subiquity-disable-cloudinit-networking.cfg and make sure that “network: {config: disabled}” entry is there. If the entry is missing, we have to create it.

Now, to configure a static IP address, we need to modify the YAML configuration file at /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml. Please note, when editing a YAML file, make sure you follow the YAML code indentation standards. The suggested syntax for YAML files is to use 2 spaces for indentation, do not use TABS. If the indentation and syntax are incorrect, the changes will not work.

As seen in the file, DHCP is available and the server is getting the IP address from the DHCP server. To change your server IP address, for example to 192.168.1.100, let’s back up the file /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml

and open the file

to replace the content of /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml above with these lines.

When editing the file, make sure the ethernet interface match with the one we see when invoking the ‘ip a’ or ‘ip link’ command.

To check the new configuration file without applying the changes, we can run this command:

If everything is okay, you will see a message as seen in the picture below. You can hit ENTER to accept the changes or leave it to revert the changes back to the previous configuration.

Configure Static IP Address on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04

Most modern home routers have configuration options to allow you to reserve an IP address for a specific device connected to the same network. With this option in your home router, your devices on the network will get static/fixed IP addresses. This is the easiest and most recommended way to assign an IP address to your device, and this is called static DHCP or DHCP reservation.

If you do not want to configure it on the router, you can do it on the device itself. At this moment, we will show you how to configure a static IP address on Ubuntu desktop 20.04. Let’s click on the network icon on the top right of your screen.

Clicking the icon will bring you to the new window, as seen in the picture below

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In this example, we will configure the static IP address for the wired connection. So, we need to click on the cog icon next to the on-off slider in the wired connection section. To configure your WiFi connection, then you need to click on the cog icon in the WiFi connection section.

This will open a new window, click on the IPv4 as shown in the picture below

In the next window, choose “Manual” in IPv4 Method and fill the following information in the forms

You can leave the DNS part blank if you want to set it to automatic or use your own DNS address, separate the IP addresses with commas, for example, 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 , then click on the APPLY button above.

Congratulations! you have successfully configured a static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04.

Of course, you don’t need to configure a static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04 yourself if you use one of our Linux VPS Hosting services and have additional IP addresses. In which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to configure and set this up for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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Set static IP in Ubuntu using Terminal

Everything you need to know about setting static IP on an Ubuntu machine using the command line.

Dec 5, 2022 — Pratham Patel

Normally, the router's DHCP server handles assigning the IP address to every device on the network, including your computer.

The DHCP server may also give you a new IP address occasionally. This could cause a problem if you have a home lab or server setup that works on a fixed IP address.

You need to set a static IP address on your Ubuntu system to avoid problems.

Step 1: Identify the correct network interface

The first step is always to know the name of your network interface.

"But why?" you might ask. That is because since Ubuntu 20.04, the network interfaces are named using predictable network interface names . This means your one and only ethernet interface will not be named 'eth0'.

Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop use different renderers for 'netplan', they are 'systemd-networkd' and 'NetworkManager', respectively. So let's go over their differences.

Ubuntu Server

To see available network interfaces on Ubuntu Server, run the following command:

Doing so will show a similar result:

The output enumerates network interfaces with numbers.

From this, I can see that the ethernet interface is 'enp1s0'.

Ubuntu Desktop

The advantage (at least in my opinion) of having Ubuntu Desktop is having NetworkManager as the renderer for netplan .

It has a pretty CLI output :)

Run the following command to view the available network interfaces:

That will give you the device name, type, state and connection status.

Here is what it looks like on my computer:

This is more readable at first glance. I can make out that my ethernet interface is named 'enp1s0'.

Step 2: See current IP address

Now that you know which interface needs to be addressed, let us edit a file .

Before I change my IP address/set a static one, let us first see what my current IP address is .

Nice! But let's change it to '192.168.122.128' for demonstration purposes.

Step 3: See the gateway

A gateway is a device that connects different networks (basically what your all-in-one router is). To know the address of your gateway, run the following command:

The gateway address will be on the line that begins with "default via".

Below is the output of running the ip command on my computer:

On the line that starts with "default via", I can see that my gateway address '192.168.122.1'

Make a note of your gateway address.

Step 4: Set static IP address

Now that you have detail like interface name and gateway address, it is time to edit a config file.

Step 4-A: Disable cloud-init if present

The easiest way to know if cloud-init is present or not is to check if there is a package with that name.

Run the following command to check:

If you get an outupt, you have 'cloud-init' installed.

Now, to disable could-init, create a new file inside the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d directory. The name does not matter, so I will call it '99-disable-cloud-init.cfg'.

Add the following line to it:

Please reboot your Ubuntu system now so that cloud-init does not interfere when we set our static IP address in the next step. :)

Back to Step 4

Once the 'cloud-init' related configuration is complete, we must now edit the netplan configuration to add our static IP address.

Go to the /etc/netplan directory. It is better if there is one file (easier to know which one to edit), but in some cases, there might also be more than one file with the extension '.yml' or '.yaml'.

When in doubt, grep for the name of your network interface. Use the following command if you are not comfortable with grep:

Since the name of network interface for my ethernet is 'enp1s0', I will run the following command:

running this command shows that the file I am looking for is '00-installer-config.yaml'. So let us take a look at it.

You might have noticed a line that says 'ethernet' and our network interface name under that. Under this is where we configure our 'enp1s0' network interface.

Since we do not want DHCP assigned IP address, let us change that field from true to no .

Add a field called addresses . Write the IP address you wish to assign your computer along with the network prefix. So I will write 192.168.122.128/24 in the addresses field.

Finally, we also need to specify DNS nameservers. For that, create a new field called nameservers and under that, create a field called addresses which contains the IP address for your DNS servers . I used Cloudflare's DNS servers but you can use whatever you want.

This is what my '00-installer-config.yaml' file looks like after editing it to my liking.

To apply the settings, run the following command:

This will take only a few seconds, and the IP address will be updated once it is done.

You can check the IP address using the hostname -I command.

Perfect! The IP address has now changed successfully.

I know that it feels complicated but this is the proper procedure when you are trying to assign static IP via the command line in Ubuntu.

Let me know if you are stuck at some point or encounter any technical issues.

Fell in love with Ubuntu the first time I tried it. Been distro-hopping since 2016.

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How to Assign Static IP Address on Ubuntu Linux

Brief: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to assign static IP address on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Both command line and GUI methods have been discussed.

IP addresses on Linux Systems in most cases are assigned by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers. IP addresses assigned this way are dynamic which means that the IP address might change when you restart your Ubuntu system . It’s not necessary but it may happen.

Dynamic IP is not an issue for normal desktop Linux users in most cases . It could become an issue if you have employed some special kind of networking between your computers.

For example, you can share your keyboard and mouse between Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi . The configuration uses IP addresses of both system. If the IP address changes dynamically, then your setup won’t work.

Another use case is with servers or remotely administered desktops. It is easier to set static addresses on those systems for connection stability and consistency between the users and applications.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up static IP address on Ubuntu based Linux distributions. Let me show you the command line way first and then I’ll show the graphical way of doing it on desktop.

Method 1: Assign static IP in Ubuntu using command line

Note for desktop users : Use static IP only when you need it. Automatic IP saves you a lot of headache in handling network configuration.

Step 1: Get the name of network interface and the default gateway

The first thing you need to know is the name of the network interface for which you have to set up the static IP.

You can either use ip command or the network manager CLI like this:

In my case, it shows my Ethernet (wired) network is called enp0s25:

Next, you should note the default gateway IP using the Linux command ip route :

As you can guess, the default gateway is 192.168.31.1 for me.

Step 2: Locate Netplan configuration

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and later versions use Netplan for managing the network configuration. Netplan configuration are driven by .yaml files located in /etc/netplan directory.

By default, you should see a .yaml file named something like 01-network-manager-all.yaml, 50-cloud-init.yaml, 01-netcfg.yaml.

Whatever maybe the name, its content should look like this:

You need to edit this file for using static IP.

Step 3: Edit Netplan configuration for assigning static IP

Just for the sake of it, make a backup of your yaml file.

Please make sure to use the correct yaml file name in the commands from here onward.

Use nano editor with sudo to open the yaml file like this:

Please note that yaml files use spaces for indentation . If you use tab or incorrect indention, your changes won’t be saved.

You should edit the file and make it look like this by providing the actual details of your IP address, gateway, interface name etc.

In the above file, I have set the static IP to 192.168.31.16.

Save the file and apply the changes with this command:

You can verify it by displaying your ip address in the terminal with ‘ip a’ command.

If you don’t want to use the static IP address anymore, you can revert easily.

If you have backed up the original yaml file, you can delete the new one and use the backup one.

Otherwise, you can change the yaml file again and make it look like this:

Method 2: Switch to static IP address in Ubuntu graphically

If you are on desktop, using the graphical method is easier and faster.

Go to the settings and look for network settings. Click the gear symbol adjacent to your network connection.

Next, you should go to the IPv4 tab. Under the IPv4 Method section, click on Manual.

In the Addresses section, enter the IP static IP address you want, netmask is usually 24 and you already know your gateway IP with the ip route command.

You may also change the DNS server if you want. You can keep Routes section to Automatic.

Once everything is done, click on Apply button. See, how easy it is to set a static IP address graphically.

If you haven’t read my previous article on how to change MAC Address , you may want to read in conjunction with this one.

More networking related articles will be rolling out, let me know your thoughts at the comments below and stay connected to our social media.

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How to Configure Static IPv4 Address on Ubuntu 20.04

Question – How do I set a static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Desktop systems? Steps to set the static IP address on your Ubuntu Desktop system

Ubuntu 20.04 systems uses netplan from the previous LTS system. The desktop systems provide an attractive graphical user interface to work with it. Using the GUI, you can easily change or set a static IP address on your Ubuntu system.

Set A Static IP on Ubuntu 20.04

You must have a root or sudo privileged account in the Ubuntu system. Login to your Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop system. After that open settings on your machine as shown in the below screenshot.

In the settings window, click on Network tab in the left sidebar. After that click icon to open the setting for your systems network interface as shown on the below screen.

This window will show you the current IP address configured on your system.

Now select the IPv4 tab Then under the IPv4 Method select the “ Manual ” option. In the Addresses section and set your IP Address, Netmask, and Gateway. You may also set remote DNS IP addresses. If you don’t know what to set here use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as shown in below screenshot.

View Current IPs on Ubuntu

You can view the current static IP under the details tab.

To view IP on the command line. Press CTRL + ALT + T to launch the terminal on your Ubuntu system. Then type the following command to view all IP addresses configured on your system.

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Configure Static IP Address on Ubuntu 20.04 (Server CLI and Desktop)

In your IT environment, sometimes you may be compelled to configure a static IP instead of relying on the DHCP protocol. A perfect example is when you are setting up a Ubuntu server to act as a file or a web server for your organization. A static IP, as the name suggests, ensures that the IP address of your system remains unchanged. With DHCP, the IP address changes once the lease time for the IP address expires and this is undesirable for servers.

In this guide, we will explore two ways of manually assigning a static IP on Ubuntu 20.04. We will demonstrate how you can configure a static IP on an instance of Ubuntu server and Ubuntu desktop.

Assign a static IP on Ubuntu server 20.04

From Ubuntu 17.10 and later versions, networking is controlled by the Netplan feature. The configuration files for Netplan are located in the /etc/netplan directory and are written in YAML. Inside this directory, you will find YAML configuration files labeled either 50-cloud-init.yaml , or 00-installer-config.yaml .

However, If you are running a cloud instance of Ubuntu, chances are that it is managed by cloud-init which auto-assigns it an IP address by leveraging the DHCP protocol. Before we proceed further, you need to disable cloud-init. To achieve this, open the subiquity-disable-cloudinit-networking.cfg cloud-init configuration file in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/ directory

Set the ' network ' directive to ' disabled '.

Save the changes and quit. Next, head over to the Netplan configuration file. In my case, I have the 00-installer-config.yaml file.

From the configuration file, we can see the ' network' directive that has 2 elements. The first one is the ' ethernets ' which specifies the network interface and the second one is the version of the renderer which is ' systemd-networkd ' for non-GUI instances and NetworkManager for Ubuntu desktop ( With GUI )

We are going to set the ' dhcp4 ' value to ' no ' to disable the DHCP protocol and specify the interface's Static IP as follows.

To assign a static IP address to  ens3  interface, modify the file as follows:

• Specify the static IP address of the server. in the   addresses : section, specify an IPv4 address to be assigned to the network interface.
• Next, Specify the gateway.
• Under  nameservers , specify the DNS or IP addresses of the nameservers. Here, we have specified Google's DNS which is 8.8.8.8 and the Router's IP.

Save the YAML file and exit. To apply the changes made, run the command:

You can use the ifconfig or ip command to verify that your network interface is set to use the static IP configured moments ago.

Additionally, you can use the IP route show command to display the new routes on your system.

Perfect! We have successfully configured a static IP on the Ubuntu server. Let's now switch gears and see how you can replicate the same on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04

Configure Static IP on Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop

If you are running a Desktop GUI, then configuring a static IP should be quite easy. Click on the ' Network icon ' at the top right corner of your screen and select the 'Wired Settings ' option.

This opens the 'Network ' configuration page. In the 'Wired ' section, click on the gear wheel icon.

This displays a summary of your current IP configuration. By default, the system obtains its IP configuration via the DHCP protocol. We will change from using DHCP to Manual.

So, click on the ' IPv4 ' tab which directs you to this section. As anticipated, DHCP is turned on.

Switch from ' Automatic (DHCP) ' to ' Manual '. Then specify the static IPv4 address including the netmask, gateway, and DNS servers. To save the changes, click on the ' Apply ' button.

Head back to the ' Network' section and restart the networking service by toggling off and on.

Once again, click on the gear wheel icon and confirm that the static IP settings have reflected.

And it's as simple as that. We have successfully configured a static IP on Ubuntu Desktop.

Ubuntu, like most other systems, comes configured with DHCP to obtain an IP from the DHCP server, or router. In this guide, we have covered how you can apply static IP settings on command-line and using the GUI. Before setting a static IP, it's always recommended to reserve the IP that you want to assign to your server on the router. Equally important is to ensure that no other client system is using that IP address to avoid an IP conflict.

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About The Author

James kiarie.

James Kiarie is a skilled and certified LPIC Linux administrator with a strong passion for technical writing, specializing in the Linux domain. With over four years of experience, he has crafted numerous technical guides, helping a wide audience navigate through various Linux distributions.

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How to set a static ip address in Ubuntu Server 20.04

When you install Ubuntu server, its network setting defaults to dynamic IP addressing, that is, the network management daemon in Ubuntu searches for a DHCP server on the connected network and configures the network with the IP address assigned by DHCP. Even when you start an instance in the cloud, the network is configured with dynamic addressing using the DHCP server setup by the cloud service provider. In this chapter, you will learn how to configure the network interface with static IP assignment.

Follow these steps to connect to the network with a static IP:

Step 1 : Open /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml and find the following lines:

Step 2 : Change the preceding lines to add an IP address, net mask, and default gateway (replace samples with the respective values):

Step 3 : Then run sudo netplan apply

Step 4 : Try to ping a remote host to test the network connection

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How to set a Static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04?

A server usually always has a static IP address that facilitates the rest of the network services. So although it is not mandatory if it is of great help for the management of the server. So this post is about how to define a static IP address in Ubuntu 20.04

A Static IP address

An IP address is an identifier held by each device that connects to the Internet or a computer network. In the case of the Internet, it must be unique to avoid connection conflicts.

On the one hand, there are dynamic IP addresses that change their value from time to time. Normally, these addresses are assigned by a DCHP server . The sysadmin does not have to worry about the assigned address as they are renewed from time to time.

On the other hand, we have static or fixed IP addresses, which unlike dynamical ones, do not change over time. In this case, it must be assigned and configured manually in the system.

Each of them has its own advantages, however, for internal networks, it is convenient to have equipment with static IP addresses. This facilitates the administration and routing of packets within the network. It is also easier to maintain the network.

So, let us work!

How to set up a static IP address on Ubuntu 20.04?

Before starting the work, it is necessary to know which is the network interface to which we want to assign the static IP address. To do this, execute the following command:

As you can see in the image, I only have a network interface called enp0s3 whose IP address is 192.168.250.8 but it was assigned with DHCP. So I’m going to assign it the static IP address 192.168.250.20

In Ubuntu the network configuration is done by netplan where the configurations are written in yml format.

So, before modifying the configuration file, it is convenient to make a backup of this file to prevent problems.

And now you can modify the file with the help of nano.

You will see the following content:

Then modify it to look like this:

I think the options are very easy to understand but I will explain it to you anyway:

• dhcp4: it is not so that the interface does not use DHCP and only uses the IP address we set.
• addresses: The IP address that we are going to define.
• gateway4: The gateway of the network
• nameservers: the DNS servers that the computer will use.

Then save the changes and close the file. Remember that the file is in yml format so it respects the rules and syntax so it does not give any error.

To apply the changes, execute the following command:

And check the changes with the following command:

As you can see, everything went well.

Setting a static IP address to Ubuntu 20.04 is quite simple even from the terminal. With this you will be able to manage your server or computer within a network more easily.

Please share this post and join our Telegram channel .

Watch out for the indentation error you made in the 00-installer-config.yaml. Should look like this: “” dhcp4: no addresses: – 192.168.121.199/24 gateway4: 192.168.121.1 nameservers: addresses: [8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1] “

simple & short,

thank you very much.

I don’t have a 00-installer-config.yaml file in my /etc/netplan directory. I only have a 01-network-manager-all.yaml file which does not have the same content. ???

Thanks, Been a while since I had to use change the ip in Ubuntu. Things changed 🙂

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• This article found with a quick google search shows and tells you how to set a static IP –  David Mar 27, 2021 at 10:10

2 Answers 2

You set it in /etc/netplan/ it's quite easy. I wrote about it here .

• You should include the steps here, and not just link to the article. –  Artur Meinild Mar 30, 2021 at 8:57
• gateway4 is long deprecated and steps are not here. Down –  Sam Jan 9, 2023 at 22:06

Static ip can be set in network settings in Ubuntu, see this .

• OP is related to Ubuntu Server –  Pablo Bianchi May 12, 2021 at 4:45

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