A network namespace is logically another copy of the network stack,
with its own routes, firewall rules, and network devices.
By convention a named network namespace is an object at
/var/run/netns/NAME that can be opened. The file descriptor
resulting from opening /var/run/netns/NAME refers to the specified
network namespace. Holding that file descriptor open keeps the
network namespace alive. The file descriptor can be used with the
setns(2) system call to change the network namespace associated with
a task.
For applications that are aware of network namespaces, the convention
is to look for global network configuration files first in
/etc/netns/NAME/ then in /etc/. For example, if you want a different
version of /etc/resolv.conf for a network namespace used to isolate
your vpn you would name it /etc/netns/myvpn/resolv.conf.
ip netns exec automates handling of this configuration, file
convention for network namespace unaware applications, by creating a
mount namespace and bind mounting all of the per network namespace
configure files into their traditional location in /etc.
ip netns list - show all of the named network namespaces
This command displays all of the network namespaces in
/var/run/netns
ip netns add NAME - create a new named network namespace
If NAME is available in /var/run/netns/ this command creates a
new network namespace and assigns NAME.
ip netns delete NAME - delete the name of a network namespace
If NAME is present in /var/run/netns it is umounted and the
mount point is removed. If this is the last user of the
network namespace the network namespace will be freed,
otherwise the network namespace persists until it has no more
users. ip netns delete may fail if the mount point is in use
in another mount namespace.
ip netns identify PID - Report network namespaces names for process
This command walks through /var/run/netns and finds all the
network namespace names for network namespace of the specified
process.
ip netns pids NAME - Report processes in the named network namespace
This command walks through proc and finds all of the process
who have the named network namespace as their primary network
namespace.
ip netns exec NAME cmd ... - Run cmd in the named network namespace
This command allows applications that are network namespace
unaware to be run in something other than the default network
namespace with all of the configuration for the specified
network namespace appearing in the customary global locations.
A network namespace and bind mounts are used to move files
from their network namespace specific location to their
default locations without affecting other processes.
ip netns monitor - Report as network namespace names are added and
deleted
This command watches network namespace name addition and
deletion events and prints a line for each event it sees.
ip netns list
Shows the list of current named network namespaces
ip netns add vpn
Creates a network namespace and names it vpn
ip netns exec vpn ip link set lo up
Bring up the loopback interface in the vpn network namespace.
This page is part of the iproute2 (utilities for controlling TCP/IP
networking and traffic) project. Information about the project can
be found at
⟨http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/iproute2⟩.
If you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
netdev@vger.kernel.org, shemminger@osdl.org. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
(git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/shemminger/iproute2.git)on
2014-09-06. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
iproute2 16 Jan 2013 IP-NETNS(8)