Behaviour when ethernet MAC is 00:00:00:00:00:00 ?

Michael Wiktowy michael.wiktowy at gmail.com
Mon Nov 19 15:43:46 UTC 2007


Hi,

It seems recently one of my two onboard NICs has decided to not
remember its MAC address between reboots. Since I just updated the
BIOS firmware, I suspect that as the culprit but I also upgraded to
Fedora 8 about the same time so it may be to blame. I don't know.

Windows 2000 reports a MAC of 00:00:00:00:00:00 and won't start that
interface at all. When I boot Fedora 8, NetworkManager seems to assign
a seemingly randomly chosen MAC and generates an ethX interface for it
... everytime ... a different ethX entry. So needless to say, there
are a lot of scripts starting to accumulate in my
/etc/sysconfig/networking directory. Looking at the NIC register dump
using 'ethtool -d <device>, a MAC can be assigned using 'ifconfig
<device> hw ether <MAC>' but it just gets reset on the next reboot.

Is there a way for NetworkManager (or traditional network tools) to
identify these NICs (other than the non-persistent MAC) so that the
NIC can have a constant MAC assigned to it? Is there a way for me to
stop NetworkManager from keeping old non-existent NIC configs in the
ifcfg-ethx.bak files?

FYI:
It is a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with two onboard NICs (the other
NIC seems to work just fine).

[root at localhost ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different
version?) (rev c1)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet
Controller (rev a1)
00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce Audio
Processing Unit (rev a2)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97
Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 PCI Bridge (rev a3)
00:0d.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): nVidia Corporation nForce2 FireWire
(IEEE 1394) Controller (rev a3)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
01:0b.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3112
[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3C920B-EMB Integrated
Fast Ethernet Controller [Tornado] (rev 40)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R430 [Radeon
X800 XL] (PCIe)
03:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc R430 [Radeon X800 XL]
(PCIe) (Secondary)


/Mike




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