Using ip and hostnamectl

Many administrators on Linux have become used to using the ifconfig command in order to display and set IP addresses on Linux hosts. Although the ifconfig command is still valid, it's marked as obsolete in favor of the ip command. For Microsoft Windows administrators who move to Linux, the use of ifconfig becomes the obvious choice. As ipconfig closely resembles the Windows command line, I encourage you to learn the ongoing ip command and all that it has to offer. Using either the ifconfig or ip command on RHEL 7 will also introduce new, consistent device names. This may come as a little shock to those used to /dev/eth0.

Finally, we will look at something very new to RHEL using the hostnamectl command. This can be used to set the hostname for the current session and persistently in a single shot, rather than using the hostname command and editing the /etc/hostname file.

Consistent naming for network devices

With the hardware that we have on servers and desktops, we...