[Gllug] Fedora 16 MAC Address

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 16 April 2012 15:20, Stuart Sears <stuart at sjsears.com> wrote:
> On 16/04/12 14:58, t.clarke wrote:
>> Looks like the DHCP server is assigning the next IP address available,
>> presumably because the 'old' address has not yet expired and been released
>> back to the pool !
>
> I don't think that's the point here.
>
> It'd be this...
> $ ifconfig
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 8E:30:4D:34:6F:DE
>
> which then changes to:
> $ ifconfig
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 9E:8F:2E:02:71:B7
>
> after a reboot.
>

Ok, that is just broken.
The ethernet driver in the Linux kernel is not able to talk to the EEPROM.
The EEPROM should hold the MAC address.
As a limp mode, it is using a random MAC address, but at least being
careful to make sure it is a unicast address and locally administered.
It would be a good idea to go into the BIOS and try to get it to netboot.
It should then display on the screen what the MAC address should be.
If this MAC address is different on each boot, the hardware is faulty.
If the BIOS MAC address is the same each time, there is a bug in the
linux kernel device driver.
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