How to install "ifconfig" command in my ubuntu docker image? [duplicate]

On a fresh ubuntu docker image, run

apt-get update
apt-get install net-tools

These can be executed by logging into the docker container or add this to your dockerfile to build an image with the same.


You could also consider:

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y iputils-ping

(as Contango comments: you must first run apt-get update, to avoid error with missing repository).

See "Replacing ifconfig with ip"

it is most often recommended to move forward with the command that has replaced ifconfig. That command is ip, and it does a great job of stepping in for the out-of-date ifconfig.

But as seen in "Getting a Docker container's IP address from the host", using docker inspect can be more useful depending on your use case.


Please use the below command to get the IP address of the running container.

$ ip addr

Example-:

root@4c712d05922b:/# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
247: eth0@if248: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default
    link/ether 02:42:ac:11:00:06 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
    inet 172.17.0.6/16 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::42:acff:fe11:6/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

From within a Dockerfile something like the following should do the trick:

RUN apt-get update && \
     apt-get install -y net-tools

From memory it's best practice to combine the update and the package installation lines to prevent docker caching the update step which can result in out-dated packages being installed.

Installing it via the CLI or a shell script:

apt-get update && apt-get install net-tools


I came here because I was trying to use ifconfig on the container to find its IPAaddress and there was no ifconfig. If you really need ifconfig on the container go with @vishnu-narayanan answer above, however you may be able to get the information you need by using docker inspect on the host:

docker inspect <containerid>

There is lots of good stuff in the output including IPAddress of container:

"Networks": {
    "bridge": {
        "IPAMConfig": null,
        "Links": null,
        "Aliases": null,
        "NetworkID": "12345FAKEID",
        "EndpointID": "12345FAKEENDPOINTID",
        "Gateway": "172.17.0.1",
        "IPAddress": "172.17.0.3",
        "IPPrefixLen": 16,
        "IPv6Gateway": "",
        "GlobalIPv6Address": "",
        "GlobalIPv6PrefixLen": 0,
        "MacAddress": "01:02:03:04:05:06",
        "DriverOpts": null
    }
}