How can you confirm active network interfaces in Linux?

To confirm active network interfaces in Linux, the most effective methods are the ip a or ifconfig commands.

The ip a command is part of the iproute2 package and provides detailed information about the network interfaces, including their status (up or down), IP addresses assigned, and other settings. It’s widely used in modern Linux distributions as it offers more comprehensive output compared to older tools.

The ifconfig command is a legacy utility that was traditionally used for configuring network interfaces and is still available in many systems, although it is being deprecated in favor of the ip command. It can provide similar information about network interfaces, including whether they are active, along with IP configurations.

While other commands mentioned might provide some network-related information, they do not serve the primary function of directly confirming the active network interfaces on a Linux system as effectively as ip a or ifconfig. For instance, ls dev would only list device files and not provide specific interface information. The networkctl command, which is specific to systemd-based systems, can show the network status but might not be available on all distributions. Furthermore, netstat can provide network connections and routing information,