Disable virbr0 nic in CentOS / Red Hat

You installed CentOS8/RHEL8 and you setup only one network interface, but some random IP address still shows up, and you see virbr0 interface – what is it, what does it do? Do I need it?

Virbr0 is used for virtualization purposes and acts as a switch you can connect your guests and your host if you are virtualizing.

In my case, my LAB is virtualized, I won’t be using virtualization so I will disable the interface.

Lets first check what interfaces we have

ifconfig -a

So, I have the interface active.

I don’t use libvirtd service and I want to completely disable it.

We will stop the service by running

systemctl stop libvirtd.service

Now, let’s check the status of the service

systemctl status libvirtd.service

It is inactive.

We will now disable service permanently

systemctl disable libvirtd.service

I rebooted the machine after this change, and after reboot checked once again with

ifconfig -a 

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