With laptops there’s often a need to have multiple network profiles, especially when traveling. With development laptops there’s a need to do this fast, usually from the terminal
On servers with no GUI this can be easily accomplished by netplan
However, if you’re running a Linux GUI desktop then you’re likely using the popular GUI Network Manager when configuring network connections.
Network Manager also has a CLI component: nmcli.
To get started, install nmcli:
$ apt-get install network-manager
To list the configured network profiles:
$ nmcli c show
Output:
NAME UUID TYPE DEVICE MYWIFI 304ae38f-8ca5-447a-8be9-20608a29e6b0 wifi wlp2s0 br-86167549b1e0 61ae9392-88bb-435b-ae1b-4525dd811665 bridge br-86167549b1e0 lo d53449aa-a96b-44c4-a46a-48949c7abc90 loopback lo br-5f172a54d046 f3a4add6-bcc2-4b37-bbd4-4790656bb0f3 bridge br-5f172a54d046 docker0 13bae0b1-a4a0-465a-909c-9e370122ee7f bridge docker0 MYWIFI (Static) 31cca8a6-1675-44f7-bb53-d88a919fbb45 wifi -- netplan-enp0s31f6 d4735e4b-9bfa-3052-b1c4-ef3302803c9a ethernet --
Using the UUID you can turn the profiles on and off:
# Turn a profile ON $ nmcli c up
# Turn a profile OFF $ nmcli c down
nmcli provides many more options for configuring your network connections via the CLI:
nmcli --help