ip -- command syntax

The generic form of an ip command is:

ip [ OPTIONS ] OBJECT [ COMMAND [ ARGUMENTS ]]

where OPTIONS is a set of optional modifiers affecting the general behaviour of the ip utility or changing its output. All options begin with the character '-' and may be used in either long or abbreviated forms. Currently, the following options are available:

• -V, -Version

  -- print the version of the ip utility and exit.

• -s, -stats, -statistics

  -- output more information. If the option appears twice or more, the amount of information increases. As a rule, the information is statistics or some time values.

• -d, -details

  -- output more detailed information.

• -f, -family followed by a protocol family identifier: inet, inet6 or link.

  -- enforce the protocol family to use. If the option is not present, the protocol family is guessed from other arguments. If the rest of the command line does not give enough information to guess the family, ip falls back to the default one, usually inet or any. link is a special family identifier meaning that no networking protocol is involved.

• -4

  -- shortcut for -family inet.

• -6

  -- shortcut for -family inet6.

• -0

  -- shortcut for -family link.

• -o, -oneline

  -- output each record on a single line, replacing line feeds with the '\' character. This is convenient when you want to count records with wc or to grep the output. The trivial script rtpr converts the output back into readable form.

• -r, -resolve

  -- use the system's name resolver to print DNS names instead of host addresses.

  1cm NB. Do not use this option when reporting bugs or asking for advice.

  1cm NB. ip never uses DNS to resolve names to addresses.

• -b, -batch FILE

  -- read commands from provided file or standart input and invoke them. First failure will cause termination of ip. In batch FILE everything which begins with # symbol is ignored and can be used for comments.