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I have installed Stretch and I find that NetworkManager gets in my way more often than not, and I would rather familiarize myself with network interface administration at a lower level based on the contents of /etc/network/interfaces.

Which command line programs take over the task network configuration when NetworkManager is disabled?

There are a number of programs like ip, ifconfig, iwconfig, and wicd it is hard to tell which of these are used by /etc/network/interfaces to configure network settings.

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To answer this, follow the trail starting with /etc/network/interfaces, or rather the corresponding manpage, interfaces.5. A search reveals that it comes from ifupdown or ifupdown2. Looking at the corresponding package dependencies shows that they use iproute2, and can optionally use ppp, rdnssd, and a DHCP client.

Reading the manpage provides additional detail, in particular concerning wireless support which is provided by wireless-tools and iw. Many other packages provide ifupdown extensions.

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  • Six years on I feel prompted to answer the question again, only for this question to be the first of the Similar questions offered even before I typed out the Which of the networking util. Have there been many changes 6 years on with IPv6, netplan etc getting added to the mix? Commented Jun 23, 2024 at 13:16
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    IPv6 isn’t new, and was already well supported six years ago (I’ve been using it for well over a decade). Netplan is used in Ubuntu, but not in Debian (at least, not by default). ifupdown is still supported, the only major change in Debian 12 in this area is that isc-dhcp-client is deprecated; you should use udhcpc if you’re using ifupdown. Commented Jun 23, 2024 at 16:43

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