On latest releases of Rocky, AlmaLinux, CentOS operating systems, the old ifup and ifdown commands are not installed by default. This change is because network interfaces are now managed by NetworkManager instead of traditional network scripts.

To fix the error “ifup: command not found” or “ifdown: command not found” on RHEL-based systems, you need to install the package that provides the commands.

sudo dnf search network-scripts

In the output, you’ll see:

Last metadata expiration check: 0:34:08 ago on Mon 28 Apr 2025 10:40:44 PM EAT.
============================================================================================================= Name Matched: network-scripts ==============================================================================================================
network-scripts-openvswitch2.16.x86_64 : Open vSwitch legacy network service support
============================================================================================================ Summary Matched: network-scripts ============================================================================================================
NetworkManager-initscripts-updown.noarch : Legacy ifup/ifdown scripts for NetworkManager that replace initscripts (network-scripts)

If using NetworkManager install NetworkManager-initscripts-updown package.

sudo dnf install NetworkManager-initscripts-updown

Press y to accept the installation:

Dependencies resolved.
==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                                                                       Architecture                                       Version                                                        Repository                                          Size
==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 NetworkManager-initscripts-updown                                             noarch                                             1:1.48.10-8.el9_5                                              baseos                                              20 k

Transaction Summary
==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 20 k
Installed size: 2.1 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y

If using Open vSwitch, install network-scripts-openvswitch2 package:

sudo dnf install network-scripts-openvswitch*

Confirm it exist now:

$ which ifup
/usr/sbin/ifup

$ which ifdown
/usr/sbin/ifdown