Handbook:Parts/Networking/Introduction

The following networking portion of the handbook describes 'advanced' network configuration for systems running the OpenRC init system utilizing netifrc as the network management system.

For systems running systemd, readers should review see the networking portion of the systemd article.

Getting started
This networking guide presumes that the user has correctly configured the system and has determined the hardware's network interface name(s). The network interface name is produced based on the bus location of the network card(s) in the system. Because of this there is potential for interface name variants including: eno0, ens1, wlan0, enp1s0, etc. Each system may have a slightly different interface name. The following content presumes the name of the interface to configured is eth0, although any of the aforementioned names will work.

To get started configuring the network card, tell the Gentoo RC system about it. This is done by creating a symbolic link from to  (or whatever the network interface name is on the system) in.

Gentoo's RC system now knows about that interface. It also needs to know how to configure the new interface. All the network interfaces are configured in file. Below is a sample configuration for DHCP and static addresses.

Now that the interface is configured, we can start and stop it using the following commands:

Now that the network interface has been successfully stopped and started, the next step is to have it started when Gentoo boots. Here is how to do this.: