I cannot connect to the LAN because every time I boot my notebook computer
has a different MAC address for the wired eth0. The router denies access
to MAC addresses that have not been authorized. I am first trying to connect
only by a wired connection. I searched for and found others having a similar
problem, but not exactly. Also the suggestions there do not seem to apply
to my particular system.

I have an HP Pavillion dv6000. I have tried Kubuntu 8.04 and
Debian Lenny Release Candidate 1 distos. Both distros have the same problem.
The following details edited from uname, dmesg, and lshal were obtained
while running Debian Lenny RC1.

Notice that in dmesg an all-zeros Mac address was detected, and then it says
it is switching to a "random MAC". It is not entirely random. The first
three bytes always seem to be the same 00:00:6c for what it's worth. I can't
change the router. Is there any way I can designate a permenant MAC address
that will be reliable every time I boot?

From uname -r:
2.6.26-1-686

From dmesg:
[ 4.024538] forcedeth: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.61.
[ 4.024949] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LMAC] enabled at IRQ 20
[ 4.024960] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.0[A] -> Link [LMAC] -> GSI 20 (level, high) -> IRQ 20
[ 4.024968] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:14.0 to 64
[ 4.024996] forcedeth 0000:00:14.0: Invalid Mac address detected: 00:00:00:00:00:00
[ 4.025047] forcedeth 0000:00:14.0: Please complain to your hardware vendor. Switching to a random MAC.
[ 4.546168] forcedeth 0000:00:14.0: ifname eth0, PHY OUI 0x732 @ 1, addr 00:00:6c:bd:43:53
[ 4.546173] forcedeth 0000:00:14.0: highdma pwrctl timirq lnktim desc-v3

From lshal:

udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_269'
info.linux.driver = 'forcedeth' (string)
info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer' (string)
info.product = 'MCP51 Ethernet Controller' (string)
info.subsystem = 'pci' (string)
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_269' (string)
info.vendor = 'nVidia Corporation' (string)
linux.hotplug_type = 2 (0x2) (int)
linux.subsystem = 'pci' (string)
linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0' (string)
pci.device_class = 6 (0x6) (int)
pci.device_protocol = 0 (0x0) (int)
pci.device_subclass = 128 (0x80) (int)
pci.linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0' (string)
pci.product = 'MCP51 Ethernet Controller' (string)
pci.product_id = 617 (0x269) (int)
pci.subsys_product = 'Presario V6133CL' (string)
pci.subsys_product_id = 12471 (0x30b7) (int)
pci.subsys_vendor = 'Hewlett-Packard Company' (string)
pci.subsys_vendor_id = 4156 (0x103c) (int)
pci.vendor = 'nVidia Corporation' (string)
pci.vendor_id = 4318 (0x10de) (int)

Thanks in advance for your help.

Go into the systems BIOS and theres an option in there for the NIC anonimizer / randomizer or some such nonesense.
Disable that 'feature' and the problem should go away.

I've got a similar problem, with Fedora. I googled around for a fix some time ago, and the best I could find was the suggestion that it was a bios bug, or something to do with my chipset.

However, I did come up with a workable fix, just not as clean as I would like. You want to change your MAC to a desired address manually, before the network service is started. I created a new service, "setmac":
The syntax here is for Fedora; Debian services are probably started differently, but you want the line containing ifconfig at minimum. Number the new service so that it starts before the network service. Maybe a Debian expert can fill in the details?

I also had the symptom that udev, encountering a MAC it had never seen before, assigned the network adapter to a new device on each boot: eth1, eth2, ... maddening, to say the least. I worked around this by editing /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules to remove the reference to the MAC.

90 percent of bios related problems are solved by setting them to non-OS controlled system. or non windows or even older non 0S2 and let linux just read them and not get involved.
because Linux is not the greatest at doing that Thank you farslayer I would have never thought of that. cool

how to crack linux exam of exam code 133,253

That is totally inappropriate for these forums. not to mention posted in the wrong place if it were appropriate. Don't hijack other users threads, especially with topics that are against the rules..

please read them.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/rules.html

Thanks

I have also noticed with a couple searches the forcedeth driver has had bugs occasionally that cause the MAC to change for various reasons.. I couldn't pinpoint a particular bug for this situation but it's also a possibility.

Farslayer, that was exactly my own situation, which first manifested itself after Fedora Core 6, IIRC. When the MAC is arbitrarily set to something illegal, the kernel sets it to something legal, but random.
When this first occurred on my system, I had looked for an incorrect BIOS setting as you suggested, without success.

A test to see if it's forcedeth

I had the same behavior with forcedeth with openSUSE 10.3, but it disappeared after 11.0. You could check by burning a live-cd of a newer distro that allows you to make and save changes: I have Ubuntu 8.10 on a USB flash drive that I could use. Boot and configure the connection, saving the settings, then reboot. If you connect you might consider if a newer installation of some flavor of 8.10 would solve the problem.