How to Restart Network Service in FreeBSD

There is a certain command which can be executed in the command line where the command itself is mainly for restarting network service in FreeBSD operating system. The command must be executed as ‘root’ account where it can be acquired by logging in as a normal user and then switching it to the ‘root’ account or just directly logging in as ‘root’ account. The logging process can be done locally or remotely where there is a limitation for ‘root’ account regarding it. Read the article titled ‘How to Allow root account to connect via SSH in FreeBSD’ in this link so that ‘root’ account itself can do a remote connection via SSH to start logging in remotely.

After gaining access either locally or remotely as ‘root’ account, just execute the following command for restarting network service using the following command :

service netif restart

The above command execution can be shown in the real situation where in the context of this article, the access connection to the command line using ‘root’ account is done remotely :

root@mybsd:~ # service netif restart
Stopping dhclient.
dhclient not running? (check /var/run/dhclient.em1.pid).
Stopping Network: lo0 em0 em1.
lo0: flags=8048<LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
groups: lo
em0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=9b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM>
ether 08:00:27:5d:dc:96
hwaddr 08:00:27:5d:dc:96
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
em1: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=9b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM>
ether 08:00:27:5f:b7:29
hwaddr 08:00:27:5f:b7:29
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
Starting Network: lo0 em0 em1.
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
groups: lo
em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=9b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM>
ether 08:00:27:5d:dc:96
hwaddr 08:00:27:5d:dc:96
inet 10.0.2.15 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.2.255
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
em1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=9b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM>
ether 08:00:27:5f:b7:29
hwaddr 08:00:27:5f:b7:29
inet 192.168.56.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
root@mybsd:~ #

The output above is showing the restart process for each of the network interface card available in the operating system.