Configure Networking on AlmaLinux with Examples

In this guide, we want to teach you How To Configure Networking on AlmaLinux with the nmcli command.

nmcli is a command-line tool that is used for controlling NetworkManager. nmcli command can also be used to display network device status, create, edit, activate/deactivate, and delete network connections.

Typical Uses:

Scripts: Instead of manually managing the network connections it utilizes NetworkManager via nmcli.
Servers, headless machines, and terminals: Can be used to control NetworkManager with no GUI and control system-wide connections.

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Configure Networking on AlmaLinux with nmcli command

Configure Networking on AlmaLinux with nmcli command

In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the nmcli command to control network connections and restart your network on AlmaLinux.

How To Check Network Status on AlmaLinux

NetworkManager is a system network service that manages your network devices and connections and attempts to keep network connectivity active when available.

One of the most popular usages of the nmcli command is to check whether the Network Manager is running or not on your server. To do this, you can run the following command:

nmcli -t -f RUNNING general

In your output you will see:

Output
running

Also, you can get a general status by running the command below:

nmcli general

Output
STATE      CONNECTIVITY  WIFI-HW  WIFI     WWAN-HW  WWAN    
connected  full          enabled  enabled  enabled  enabled

How To List Available Devices on AlmaLinux

At this point, you can use the nmcli command to display your all available devices on AlmaLinux:

nmcli dev status

In my case, I get the following output:

Output
DEVICE        TYPE           STATE            CONNECTION
eth0          ethernet           connected      System eth0
lo             loopback         unmanaged         --

How To List Active Connections on AlmaLinux

Another usage of the nmcli command is to list your active connections. To do this, run the following command:

nmcli con show

In my case, I get the following output:

Output
NAME             UUID                                                        TYPE          DEVICE
System eth0   5fb06bd0-0bb0-7ffb-45f1-d6edd65f3e03     ethernet       eth0
ens3              0e50b731-0de2-4c9f-906c-6c2f3d8129d1    ethernet         --

Also, you can list the brief information about the ethernet connection by running the command below:

nmcli con show "System eth0"

In your output, you will see something similar to this:

Output
connection.id: System eth0
connection.uuid: 5fb06bd0-0bb0-7ffb-45f1-d6edd65f3e03
connection.stable-id: --
connection.type: 802-3-ethernet
connection.interface-name: eth0
connection.autoconnect: yes
connection.autoconnect-priority: 0
connection.autoconnect-retries: -1 (default)
connection.multi-connect: 0 (default)
connection.auth-retries: -1
....

How To Change Hostname on AlmaLinux

You can easily use the nmcli command to find your current hostname and change it.

nmcli general hostname

Output
AlmaLinux

To change the hostname from AlmaLinux to Linux for example, run the command below:

nmcli general hostname linux

How To Restart Ethernet Connection on AlmaLinux

You can restart or reload your ethernet connection with the following command:

nmcli con reload

How To Restart Network on AlmaLinux

To turn networking completely off and back on in AlmaLinux, we can use the following nmcli command, which effectively restarts the network for the operating system.

# nmcli networking off
# nmcli networking on

How To Reset a Network Interface on AlmaLinux

To activate an ethernet connection, run the following command:

nmcli con up ens3

You should see the following output:

Output
Connection successfully activated

You can now verify the active connection with the following command:

nmcli con show --active

To deactivate the connection, run the following command:

nmcli con down ens3

Also, there is another way to reset a network interface in AlmaLinux is with the ip link commands, which work through networkd.

#ip link set ens3 down
#ip link set ens3 up

How To Delete an Ethernet Connection on AlmaLinux

You can also delete a specific ethernet connection with nmcli.

For example, to delete a connection ens3, run the following command:

nmcli con del ens3

You should see the following output:

Output
Connection 'ens3' (cefb3f7d-424c-42f8-b4e8-ed54e7dcb880) successfully deleted.

To get more information about the nmcli command, you can run the following command:

nmcli --help

Output
Usage: nmcli [OPTIONS] OBJECT { COMMAND | help }

OPTIONS
  -a, --ask                                ask for missing parameters
  -c, --colors auto|yes|no                 whether to use colors in output
  -e, --escape yes|no                      escape columns separators in values
  -f, --fields <field,...>|all|common      specify fields to output
  -g, --get-values <field,...>|all|common  shortcut for -m tabular -t -f
  -h, --help                               print this help
  -m, --mode tabular|multiline             output mode
  -o, --overview                           overview mode
  -p, --pretty                             pretty output
  -s, --show-secrets                       allow displaying passwords
  -t, --terse                              terse output
  -v, --version                            show program version
  -w, --wait                      set timeout waiting for finishing operations

OBJECT
  g[eneral]       NetworkManager's general status and operations
  n[etworking]    overall networking control
  r[adio]         NetworkManager radio switches
  c[onnection]    NetworkManager's connections
  d[evice]        devices managed by NetworkManager
  a[gent]         NetworkManager secret agent or polkit agent
  m[onitor]       monitor NetworkManager changes