Even the superuser can't bring up an interface if USERCTL is set to "no": [root@addx /root]# id uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel) [root@addx /root]# grep USERCTL /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp6 USERCTL=no [root@addx /root]# usernetctl ppp6 up Users are not allowed to control this interface. [root@addx /root]#
The usernetctl program is only called by ifdown if it's not run as root, so it needn't be run directly. But it'll be fixed in the next Raw Hide snapshot (5.50-1 or later) anyway.