Get MAC address using shell script

The best Linux-specific solution is to use sysfs:

$ IFACE=eth0
$ read MAC </sys/class/net/$IFACE/address
$ echo $IFACE $MAC
eth0 00:ab:cd:12:34:56

This method is extremely clean compared to the others and spawns no additional processes since read is a builtin command for POSIX shells, including non-BASH shells. However, if you need portability to OS X, then you'll have to use ifconfig and sed methods, since OS X does not have a virtual filesystem interface like sysfs.

You can do as follows

ifconfig <Interface ex:eth0,eth1> | grep -o -E '([[:xdigit:]]{1,2}:){5}[[:xdigit:]]{1,2}'

Also you can get MAC for all interface as follows

cat /sys/class/net/*/address

For particular interface like for eth0

cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address