Getting MAC Address

Question

Python 2.5 includes an uuid implementation which (in at least one version) needs the mac address. You can import the mac finding function into your own code easily:

from uuid import getnode as get_mac
mac = get_mac()

The return value is the mac address as 48 bit integer.

The pure python solution for this problem under Linux to get the MAC for a specific local interface, originally posted as a comment by vishnubob and improved by on Ben Mackey in this activestate recipe

#!/usr/bin/python

import fcntl, socket, struct

def getHwAddr(ifname):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    info = fcntl.ioctl(s.fileno(), 0x8927,  struct.pack('256s', ifname[:15]))
    return ':'.join(['%02x' % ord(char) for char in info[18:24]])

print getHwAddr('eth0')

This is the Python 3 compatible code:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import fcntl
import socket
import struct


def getHwAddr(ifname):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    info = fcntl.ioctl(s.fileno(), 0x8927,  struct.pack('256s', bytes(ifname, 'utf-8')[:15]))
    return ':'.join('%02x' % b for b in info[18:24])


def main():
    print(getHwAddr('enp0s8'))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

netifaces is a good module to use for getting the mac address (and other addresses). It's crossplatform and makes a bit more sense than using socket or uuid.

>>> import netifaces
>>> netifaces.interfaces()
['lo', 'eth0', 'tun2']

>>> netifaces.ifaddresses('eth0')[netifaces.AF_LINK]
[{'addr': '08:00:27:50:f2:51', 'broadcast': 'ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff'}]

---

• pypi location

• Good Intro to netifaces

Sometimes we have more than one net interface.

A simple method to find out the mac address of a specific interface, is:

def getmac(interface):

  try:
    mac = open('/sys/class/net/'+interface+'/address').readline()
  except:
    mac = "00:00:00:00:00:00"

  return mac[0:17]

to call the method is simple

myMAC = getmac("wlan0")