# Could IP address be shown in the console at boot?



## Spartrekus (Feb 14, 2019)

Hello,

Keyboard-less, just a monitor and ue0 ethernet.

At boot, there is the info about the mac, but the IP address would be greatly helpful.

Would it be possible to set that as default in all future FreeBSD ?

thank you!


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## SirDice (Feb 14, 2019)

MAC address is shown when the device is detected. At that point there's no network yet and thus no IP address info.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 14, 2019)

SirDice said:


> MAC address is shown when the device is detected. At that point there's no network yet and thus no IP address info.



... it is fairly possible to add this information. Power Server is major application of BSD; IP would be hence very helpful notice.


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## SirDice (Feb 14, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> ... it is fairly possible to add this information.


How? Is it supposed to look into the future? When the information you refer to is printed the interface is still unconfigured. And thus doesn't have _any_ IP information. It simply cannot print information it doesn't have. Setting the IP address is done much later in the boot process.

If you want to see the IP address when you login you're better off adding a couple of commands to ~/.login. 
`echo /sbin/ifconfig >> ~/.login`


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## olli@ (Feb 14, 2019)

In fact, the IP address _is_ printed during boot when /etc/rc.d/netif starts up and runs ifconfig(8), unless you set `rc_startmsgs="NO"` in /etc/rc.conf. So the information _is_ already there.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 14, 2019)

Which one?  Not all servers have a single IP address.  Mine at home has two (not counting the loopback interface).  The one I use most at work has 4 or 5 (it gets confusing).  In the case of the one at home, the IP address that you would really reach the computer from on the world-wide internet is not visible on the interfaces, due to NAT and reverse tunnels.  And knowing that a machine is 192.168.0.3 is not very useful; there must be millions of machines with that address.


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## phoenix (Feb 14, 2019)

Configure the device for DHCP.  Give it a recognisable hostname.

Then, either lock in the IP that the DHCP server gives it via the MAC address.  Or, look through the logs on the DHCP server for the hostname to find the IP it was given.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 14, 2019)

olli@ said:


> In fact, the IP address _is_ printed during boot when /etc/rc.d/netif starts up and runs ifconfig(8), unless you set `rc_startmsgs="NO"` in /etc/rc.conf. So the information _is_ already there.



Sounds good

..

There are many³ hacks


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## bjs (Feb 14, 2019)

There was a thread a couple days ago about adding some custom MOTD and one of those mentioned was IP address... You could remove all other MOTD and just put in one for the IP address and it would be there for you every time the system was booted right above the login prompt... Just a thought on another hack that could work for you...


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