Getting MAC Address

Solution 1:

Python 2.5 includes an uuid implementation which (in at least one version) needs the mac address. You can import the mac finding function into your own code easily:

from uuid import getnode as get_mac
mac = get_mac()

The return value is the mac address as 48 bit integer.

Solution 2:

The pure python solution for this problem under Linux to get the MAC for a specific local interface, originally posted as a comment by vishnubob and improved by on Ben Mackey in this activestate recipe

#!/usr/bin/python

import fcntl, socket, struct

def getHwAddr(ifname):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    info = fcntl.ioctl(s.fileno(), 0x8927,  struct.pack('256s', ifname[:15]))
    return ':'.join(['%02x' % ord(char) for char in info[18:24]])

print getHwAddr('eth0')

This is the Python 3 compatible code:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import fcntl
import socket
import struct


def getHwAddr(ifname):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    info = fcntl.ioctl(s.fileno(), 0x8927,  struct.pack('256s', bytes(ifname, 'utf-8')[:15]))
    return ':'.join('%02x' % b for b in info[18:24])


def main():
    print(getHwAddr('enp0s8'))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Solution 3:

netifaces is a good module to use for getting the mac address (and other addresses). It's crossplatform and makes a bit more sense than using socket or uuid.

>>> import netifaces
>>> netifaces.interfaces()
['lo', 'eth0', 'tun2']

>>> netifaces.ifaddresses('eth0')[netifaces.AF_LINK]
[{'addr': '08:00:27:50:f2:51', 'broadcast': 'ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff'}]

• pypi location

• Good Intro to netifaces

Solution 4:

Sometimes we have more than one net interface.

A simple method to find out the mac address of a specific interface, is:

def getmac(interface):

  try:
    mac = open('/sys/class/net/'+interface+'/address').readline()
  except:
    mac = "00:00:00:00:00:00"

  return mac[0:17]

to call the method is simple

myMAC = getmac("wlan0")