Find Your MAC address in Linux (Gnome 2, Gnome 3, and Unity)

What is a MAC Address?

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You can think of a MAC address as a serial number for your network card. It is a unique six two-digits hexadecimal numbers separated by colons. It is used for routing traffic on a network.

 

In this example I will show you how to find your MAC in Ubuntu with gnome 2 and Unity and Gnome 3 on Arch Linux. These steps should apply to just about any linux distribution. The only difference is how you launch the terminal.There are a few linux distros that require you to issue the commands as the root or super user.

 

 

 

 

Opening A Terminal Window

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Gnome 2:

To open a Terminal window in Gnome 2 click on Applications > Accessories > Terminal

 

 

 

 

Unuty:

To open a terminal in Unity click on Ubuntu icon in the top left corner.

 

 

 

 

In the search box start typing terminal

 

 

 

 

Once you see the terminal icon you can click on it to launch the application

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gnome 3:

To launch a terminal in Gnome 3 slide your mouse to the upper left corner where activities is.

 

 

 

 

Search for terminal

 

 

Click on the Terminal Application

 

 

Finding Your MAC Address

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In your terminal window type the following command:

ifconfig -a

 

 

 

 

The -a at the end of the command will show you all connections even if it is down.

Next to each connection you should see your MAC Address. In the image below I underlined the MAC Address as well as a few of the connections.

 

 

 

 

Hope this article was useful!