Discover Network Driver Name

Julio Batista Silva

Last updated on Jun 11, 2013 1 min read Network, Linux

Instead of restarting the computer after network issues, it can be much more practical to just restart the card, that is, add and remove the kernel module. But, for that, we first need to know the driver’s name.

Discover the interface names by looking at the first column of ifconfig:

$ ifconfig -s
  Iface      MTU    RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
  enp2s0    1500   101565      0      0 0         54380      0      0      0 BMRU
  lo       65536    26832      0      0 0         26832      0      0      0 LRU
  wlp1s0    1500   868562      0      0 0        595601      0      0      0 BMRU

Then use ethtool to discover the driver’s name:

$ ethtool -i enp2s0
  driver: atl1c
  version: 1.0.1.1-NAPI
  firmware-version:
  bus-info: 0000:02:00.0
  supports-statistics: no
  supports-test: no
  supports-eeprom-access: yes
  supports-register-dump: yes
  supports-priv-flags: no

$ ethtool -i wlp1s0
  driver: iwlwifi
  version: 3.9.5-1-ARCH
  firmware-version: 8.83.5.1 build 33692
  bus-info: 0000:01:00.0
  supports-statistics: yes
  supports-test: no
  supports-eeprom-access: no
  supports-register-dump: no
  supports-priv-flags: no

Restart the module using modprobe:

sudo modprobe -r atl1c
sudo modprobe atl1c

Julio Batista Silva

Data Engineer

I’m a computer engineer passionate about science, technology, photography, and languages. Currently working as a Data Engineer in Germany.