Getting information about network interfaces using Python

A common task for a system administrator is to program scripts to streamline routine tasks, one of which is often to inventory servers, OS versions, interfaces, IPs, software versions. In this article, we will focus on how to obtain the interfaces, MAC, and each of the IPs.

The script itself is quite self-explanatory, using certain libraries we can obtain all the necessary info:

#! /usr/bin/python
import os
import sys
import socket
from netifaces import interfaces, ifaddresses, AF_INET, AF_LINK
from IPy import IP

hostname = socket.gethostname()

print "-------------------------------"
print "Analyzing Host: " + hostname
print "-------------------------------"
print " "

print "--- Interface List: ---"
for ifaceName in interfaces():
        # Check Vlan Config
        if ifaceName.count("."):
                (iface, vlan) = ifaceName.split(".")
        else:
                iface = ifaceName
                vlan = "None"

        # Check MAC in device
        if AF_LINK in ifaddresses(ifaceName):
                mac = ifaddresses(ifaceName)[AF_LINK][0]['addr']
        else:
                mac = "None"

        # Check IP Address and print them!!
        if AF_INET in ifaddresses(ifaceName):
                for address in ifaddresses(ifaceName)[AF_INET]:
                        type = IP(address['addr']).iptype()
                        netmask = address['netmask']
                        print "-- Interface: " + str(iface)
                        print "  ++ MAC: " + mac
                        print "  ++ VLAN: " + vlan
                        print "  ++ IP: " + address['addr']
                        print "  ++ Netmask: " + netmask
                        print "  ++ Type " + type
        else:
                print "-- Interface: " + str(iface)
                print "  ++ MAC: " + mac
                print "  ++ VLAN: " + vlan

        print " "