How to detect the physical connected state of a network cable/connector?

You want to look at the nodes in

/sys/class/net/

I experimented with mine:

Wire Plugged in:

eth0/carrier:1
eth0/operstate:unknown

Wire Removed:

eth0/carrier:0
eth0/operstate:down

Wire Plugged in Again:

eth0/carrier:1
eth0/operstate:up

_{Side Trick: harvesting all properties at once the easy way:}

grep "" eth0/* 

This forms a nice list of key:value pairs.

You can use ethtool:

$ sudo ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
    Supported ports: [ TP ]
    Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                            1000baseT/Full
    Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
    Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                            1000baseT/Full
    Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
    Speed: 1000Mb/s
    Duplex: Full
    Port: Twisted Pair
    PHYAD: 0
    Transceiver: internal
    Auto-negotiation: on
    Supports Wake-on: umbg
    Wake-on: g
    Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
    Link detected: yes

To only get the Link status you can use grep:

$ sudo ethtool eth0 | grep Link
    Link detected: yes

Most modern Linux distributions use NetworkManager for this. You could use D-BUS to listen for the events.

If you want a command-line tool to check the status, you can also use mii-tool, given that you have Ethernet in mind.

on arch linux. (im not sure on other distros) you can view the operstate. which shows up if connected or down if not the operstate lives on

/sys/class/net/(interface name here)/operstate
#you can also put watch 
watch -d -n -1 /sys/class/net/(interface name here)/operstate

You can use ifconfig.

# ifconfig eth0 up
# ifconfig eth0

If the entry shows RUNNING, the interface is physically connected. This will be shown regardless if the interface is configured.

This is just another way to get the information in /sys/class/net/eth0/operstate.

tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep -E 'link (up|down)'

or for me faster gets:

tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep 'link \(up\|down\)'

It will listen to the syslog file.

Result (if disconnect and after 4 seconds connect again):

Jan 31 13:21:09 user kernel: [19343.897157] r8169 0000:06:00.0 enp6s0: link down
Jan 31 13:21:13 user kernel: [19347.143506] r8169 0000:06:00.0 enp6s0: link up

Somehow if you want to check if the ethernet cable plugged in linux after the commend:" ifconfig eth0 down". I find a solution: use the ethtool tool.

#ethtool -t eth0
The test result is PASS
The test extra info:
Register test  (offline)         0
Eeprom test    (offline)         0
Interrupt test (offline)         0
Loopback test  (offline)         0
Link test   (on/offline)         0

if cable is connected,link test is 0,otherwise is 1.

This command checks for "state UP" in the 2nd interface of the "ip a" command. I have checked in 2 computers running wifi, the 2nd listed is the cable ethernet. Case you want to check a different interface, just change the "2" in the command below to be the correct index position.

astate=`ip a | grep -E -o -m 1 "2:.*state UP"`  
if [ -n "$astat" ]; then
   echo 'cable is on'
else
   echo 'cable is off'
fi

On OpenWRT the only way to reliably do this, at least for me, is by running these commands:

# Get switch name
swconfig list

# assuming switch name is "switch0"
swconfig dev switch0 show | grep link:

# Possible output
root@OpenWrt:~# swconfig dev switch0 show | grep link:
        link: port:0 link:up speed:1000baseT full-duplex txflow rxflow
        link: port:1 link:up speed:1000baseT full-duplex txflow rxflow eee100 eee1000 auto
        link: port:2 link:up speed:1000baseT full-duplex txflow rxflow eee100 eee1000 auto
        link: port:3 link:down
        link: port:4 link:up speed:1000baseT full-duplex eee100 eee1000 auto
        link: port:5 link:down
        link: port:6 link:up speed:1000baseT full-duplex txflow rxflow

This will show either "link:down" or "link:up" on every port of your switch.

I was using my OpenWRT enhanced device as a repeater (which adds virtual ethernet and wireless lan capabilities) and found that the /sys/class/net/eth0 carrier and opstate values were unreliable. I played around with /sys/class/net/eth0.1 and /sys/class/net/eth0.2 as well with (at least to my finding) no reliable way to detect that something was physically plugged in and talking on any of the ethernet ports. I figured out a bit crude but seemingly reliable way to detect if anything had been plugged in since the last reboot/poweron state at least (which worked exactly as I needed it to in my case).

ifconfig eth0 | grep -o 'RX packets:[0-9]*' | grep -o '[0-9]*'

You'll get a 0 if nothing has been plugged in and something > 0 if anything has been plugged in (even if it was plugged in and since removed) since the last power on or reboot cycle.

Hope this helps somebody out at least!