Check your Public IP address Geo Location using the command line on Linux

If you are using VPN connections it can be important and useful to be able to check your current public IP. For me going to one of the many web sites that offer such a service is slow. As always on Linux the command line is the fastest way. Searching around I found geoiplookup which did exactly what I wanted. It uses the GeoIP library and database to find the Country that an IP address or hostname originates from.

Example

$ geoiplookup 80.60.233.195

Displays the country that 80.60.233.195 originates from e.g.

NL, Netherlands

You can have a simple bash script like :

#!/bin/bash
clear
echo "Current Public IP is :"
curl -s checkip.dyndns.org | sed 's/.*IP Address: \([0-9\.]*\).*/\1/g'
sleep 1
PUBLICIP=$(curl -s checkip.dyndns.org | sed 's/.*IP Address: \([0-9\.]*\).*/\1/g')
geoiplookup $PUBLICIP

To install on Arch :

$ sudo pacman -S geoip

To install on Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Debian

$ sudo apt-get install geoip-bin

By default the IP to country database is located at /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat