On solaris, is there a command to get the Ethernet Card MAC Address without being root

Question

On Solaris, is there a command that I can run to get the MAC address of an ethernet card without running "/sbin/ifconfig -a" as root. Running /sbin/ifconfig -a as a non root user leaves out the MAC address - go figure!

Thanks,

Paul

Answer 1

Try an "arp -a", and look for your own hostname. (This works for me on the Solaris 9 machine I tried it on, but your mileage may vary.)

Answer 2

/usr/bin/netstat -pn |grep SP

Answer 3

I know this is an older question, but another option is:

/usr/sbin/prtpicl -c network -v

the :local-mac-address field will give you what you need. You will also be able to pull up MACs for disabled interfaces.

You can identify the port by the :instance and :driver-name values. I think this only works on SPARC platforms, and not x86 Solaris, but not certain.

Answer 4

Try "dladm" command with subcommand "show-phys" with -m option to see a list of MAC Addresses:

$ dladm show-phys -m

Answer 5

dladm show-linkprop -p mac-address

is the documented, definitive Solaris 11 answer (as of Sep 2017):

Check the MAC addresses of all the interfaces on the system.

...

# dladm show-linkprop -p mac-address
LINK   PROPERTY       PERM VALUE             DEFAULT           POSSIBLE
net0   mac-address    rw   8:0:20:0:0:1      8:0:20:0:0:1      --
net1   mac-address    rw   8:0:20:0:0:1      8:0:20:0:0:1      --
net3   mac-address    rw   0:14:4f:45:c:2d   0:14:4f:45:c:2d   --

None of the other answers are guaranteed to return the actual MAC address of all NICs on Solaris 11.

On my Solaris 11 installation, prtpicl doesn't return any MAC address no matter what arguments I give it.

arp -an doesn't even show all the configured physical NICs:

Net to Media Table: IPv4
Device   IP Address               Mask      Flags      Phys Addr
------ -------------------- --------------- -------- ---------------
net2   224.0.0.251          255.255.255.255 S        01:00:5e:00:00:fb
aggr0  224.0.0.251          255.255.255.255 S        01:00:5e:00:00:fb
aggr0  192.168.1.92         255.255.255.255          60:6c:66:4f:c5:c7
aggr0  192.168.1.43         255.255.255.255          b8:88:e3:f5:4c:0b
aggr0  192.168.1.45         255.255.255.255          02:08:20:93:0b:d3
net2   192.168.1.35         255.255.255.255 SPLA     00:0e:0c:72:9f:6b
net2   192.168.1.1          255.255.255.255          70:f1:96:19:5b:88
aggr0  192.168.1.5          255.255.255.255 SPLA     00:14:5e:1b:14:0a
aggr0  192.168.1.4          255.255.255.255          00:1d:09:07:5a:93
aggr0  192.168.1.6          255.255.255.255          00:14:5e:2a:75:36
aggr0  192.168.1.25         255.255.255.255          00:11:25:90:d0:07
aggr0  192.168.1.251        255.255.255.255          00:c0:b7:d2:00:60
aggr0  192.168.1.244        255.255.255.255          00:10:75:07:55:94
net2   192.168.1.244        255.255.255.255          00:10:75:07:55:94
net2   224.0.0.22           255.255.255.255 S        01:00:5e:00:00:16
aggr0  224.0.0.22           255.255.255.255 S        01:00:5e:00:00:16
aggr0  192.168.1.151        255.255.255.255          4c:66:41:af:e8:fc
net2   192.168.1.151        255.255.255.255          4c:66:41:af:e8:fc

netstat -pn produces identical results.

aggr0 is an aggregated link of net0 and net1, which physically are /dev/bge0 and /dev/bge1. So what does dladm show-phys -m show?

dladm show-phys -m shows the MAC address of aggr0 for both net0 and net1, not the MAC address of the underlying physical NICs:

LINK                SLOT     ADDRESS            INUSE CLIENT
net1                primary  0:14:5e:1b:14:a    yes   aggr0-net1
vboxnet0            primary  8:0:27:4e:ea:4d    no    --
net0                primary  0:14:5e:1b:14:a    yes   aggr0-net0
net2                primary  0:e:c:72:9f:6b     yes   iprb0

Well, at least that does tell us that aggr0 is an aggregated link using net0 and net1, but the MAC address of both net0 and net1 is the MAC address of aggr0, not the actual physical NIC MAC address.

But dladm show-linkprop -p mac-address shows

LINK     PROPERTY        PERM VALUE        EFFECTIVE    DEFAULT   POSSIBLE
net1     mac-address     rw   0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:b -- 
vboxnet0 mac-address     rw   8:0:27:4e:ea:4d 8:0:27:4e:ea:4d 8:0:27:4e:ea:4d -- 
net0     mac-address     rw   0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:a -- 
net2     mac-address     rw   0:e:c:72:9f:6b 0:e:c:72:9f:6b 0:e:c:72:9f:6b -- 
estub0   mac-address     ?    ?            ?            ?         ?
aggr0    mac-address     rw   0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:a 0:14:5e:1b:14:a -- 
vnic0    mac-address     rw   2:8:20:da:88:79 2:8:20:da:88:79 2:8:20:da:88:79 -- 
vnic1    mac-address     rw   2:8:20:31:af:de 2:8:20:31:af:de 2:8:20:31:af:de -- 
vnic2    mac-address     rw   2:8:20:fb:4:e7 2:8:20:fb:4:e7 2:8:20:fb:4:e7 -- 
vboxbridge0 mac-address  ?    ?            ?            ?         ?
samba/net0 mac-address   rw   2:8:20:93:b:d3 2:8:20:93:b:d3 2:8:20:93:b:d3 -- 

Using awk and sort to display just the default MAC address of each NIC:

dladm show-linkprop -p mac-address | grep -v LINK | awk '{ print $1 " " $6 }' | sort

produces

aggr0 0:14:5e:1b:14:a
estub0 ?
net0 0:14:5e:1b:14:a
net1 0:14:5e:1b:14:b
net2 0:e:c:72:9f:6b
samba/net0 2:8:20:93:b:d3
vboxbridge0 ?
vboxnet0 8:0:27:4e:ea:4d
vnic0 2:8:20:da:88:79
vnic1 2:8:20:31:af:de
vnic2 2:8:20:fb:4:e7

Note that the default MAC address of aggr0 is the actual MAC address of net0//dev/bge0, but that's only because when I created the aggregate link I didn't bother to assign a different MAC address and left it the default, which per the create-aggr section of the dladm man page is selected from one of the interfaces that are part of the aggregation.