So you’re trying to learn how to set a hostname & static IP address on FreeBSD 12/13?. In this guide I’ll show you how easy it is to a hostname and a Static IP address on FreeBSD 12/13. Please note that the FreeBSD network interface identifier uses the driver name followed by a number.
# ifconfig
em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=81009b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWFILTER>
ether 08:00:27:12:6b:98
inet 10.0.0.11 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.0.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=680003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
groups: lo
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
To have a persistent IP address on your FreeBSD 12/13 server, the IP address must be assigned to an interface and the IP configuration included in /etc/rc.conf. Let’s consider an example below:
- Set Server static hostname – freebsd.example.com
- Set interface IP Address – 192.168.13.4/24
- Set gateway for interface to 192.168.13.1
Set Hostname on FreeBSD 12 / FreeBSD 13
Set a hostname on FreeBSD 12/13 using the commands below:
$ sudo hostname freebsd.example.com
$ sudo vim /etc/rc.conf
hostname=freebsd.example.comIf the dhclient is used to set the hostname via DHCP, the hostname variable should be set to an empty string
Set Static IP Address on FreeBSD 12 / FreeBSD 13
Now that you have the hostname set, proceed to configure a Static IP address on FreeBSD.
sudo vim /etc/rc.confAdd:
ifconfig_em0="inet 192.168.13.4 netmask 255.255.255.0"
defaultrouter="192.168.13.1"Restart FreeBSD network service and routing table:
sudo /etc/rc.d/netif restart && sudo /etc/rc.d/routing restartTo configure an interface for DHCP, reset the settings to:
ifconfig_em0="DHCP"
