Solved: network.service Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking in RHEL/Centos 7/8

In this article, we will look into the possible reasons of getting network.service failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking error in RHEL/CentOS 7/8 based systems and the number of solutions that can be done to solve this issue. This error is quite common now a days for all the Linux Professionals to deal with. Some nice day you might want to change certain settings in your network related configuration file and suddenly after restarting the network service you will start getting the network.service failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking error. We will try to understand all the possible reasons and the solutions that can done as we go through below details.

Solved: network.service Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking in RHEL/Centos 7/8 1

network.service Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking in RHEL /CentOS 7/8

Sometimes when you try to restart your network service then you probably end up with the error "network.service Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking" as can be seen below.

[root@localhost ~]# systemctl status network.service -l
network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network; bad; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri... 23min ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(0)
Process: 1161 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.dnetwork start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: starting LSB: Bring up/down networking... 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[1161]: Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ] 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[1161]: Bringing up interface enp0s3: ERROR : [/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth] Device has different MAC address than expected, ignoring. 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[1161]: [FAILED]
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: network.service control process exited, code=exited status=1 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking. 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Unit network.service entered failed state. 
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: network.service failed.

This error could occur due to various reasons. We will try to see all of the possible reasons due to which this error could occur and what can be done to resolve this issue. For the above "network.service Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking" error, you might observe it is due to incorrect MAC Address. After providing correct MAC Address in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3 and restarting network service should resolve this error.

[root@localhost ~]# systemctl status network -l
● network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network; bad; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (exited) since Fri 2020-06-12 04:08:37 EDT; 1min 4s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 8767 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 8951 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Stopped LSB: Bring up/down networking.
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Bring up/down networking...
Jun 12 04:08:29 localhost.localdomain network[8951]: Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Jun 12 04:08:33 localhost.localdomain network[8951]: Bringing up interface enp0s3: [ OK ]
Jun 12 04:08:37 localhost.localdomain network[8951]: Bringing up interface enp0s3.bkp: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:37 localhost.localdomain network[8951]: [ OK ]
Jun 12 04:08:37 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started LSB: Bring up/down networking.

In some other case you might see below "RNETLINK answers: File exists" error. This error message might not be a error and this messages might be caused by static routes. When starting networking and because the static routes already exist so you will see the messages getting printed for each static route the script /etc/rc.d/init.d/network will try to add.

[root@localhost ~]# systemctl status network.service
network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2019-06-12 22:30:46 GMT; 28s ago
Process: 3657 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain network[4857]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: network.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking.
Jun 12 04:08:28 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Unit network.service entered failed state.

You can also see above messages when root filesystem has the _netdev mount option enabled. If the above messages are due to this reason then you need to look at the /etc/rc.d/init.d/network script before doing anything. In case if this is not the reason then you can try disabling the NetworkManager by using below systemctl commands and check the status again.

[root@localhost ~]# systemctl stop NetworkManager
[root@localhost ~]# systemctl disable NetworkManager
[root@localhost ~]# systemctl status NetworkManager -l
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Fri 2020-06-12 05:43:49 EDT; 2s ago
Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
Process: 11686 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 11686 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jun 12 05:43:39 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955019.5607] device (virbr0): Activation: successful, device activated.
Jun 12 05:43:39 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955019.5618] device (virbr0-nic): state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'external')
Jun 12 05:43:39 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955019.5758] device (virbr0-nic): Activation: successful, device activated.
Jun 12 05:43:39 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955019.5775] manager: startup complete
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955029.9160] caught SIGTERM, shutting down normally.
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Stopping Network Manager...
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955029.9181] manager: NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_LOCAL
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955029.9195] device (virbr0): bridge port virbr0-nic was detached
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[11686]: <info> [1591955029.9345] exiting (success)
Jun 12 05:43:49 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Stopped Network Manager.

NOTE:

Please be careful in disabling NetworkManager in Production Systems as it might be disastrous sometimes. Please rethink before running above command.

In some cases this issue might happen when you will set BOOTPROTO=static for using static IP Addresses where you will provide the manual IP Address, netmask and other details. This kind of issues will get resolved when you set BOOTPROTO=none instead of static and then just restart your network service.

[root@localhost ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3
TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.0.103
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1
DNS1=8.8.8.8
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=enp0s3
UUID=0b881737-d9c9-4a69-b29a-3193877817e5
DEVICE=enp0s3
ONBOOT=yes

Now just restart the network service to reflect the changes.

[root@localhost ~]# service network restart
Restarting network (via systemctl): [ OK ]

In case you are still getting the same error then you also might want to check if /etc/sysconfig/network file is available in your system. Usually this file gets created by the Anaconda daemon but if it is not there then you can simply create it by running touch /etc/sysconfig/network command as shown below.

[root@localhost ~]# touch /etc/sysconfig/network

If you are still not understanding the issue due to which you are getting network.service failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking error then you need to take a look at the journalctl output to understand the error further.

[root@localhost ~]# journalctl -xe

Hopefully, this article has helped you in solving network.service failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking error. Please let me know your feedback on the comment box.

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Solved: network.service failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking