bad mac address

wilku · 04-30-2007, 04:26 AM

I have a problem with debian and ethernet card built into my mainboard.
I use nVidia 430 chipset and 2.6.18-4-amd64 kernel.

When computer boots up, it says something about bad mac address of the ethernet card. After that the driver assigns random mac address to that card. Then this address is added to /etc/udev/rules.d/z25.persistent-net.rules holding the next ethx number. After a couple of reboots there are several randomly generated mac addresses holding eth0, eth1, eth2 and so on. So I can't automatically configure network on that computer.

I tried assigning mac in /etc/network/interfaces - it works only for the first time, when z25.persistent-net.rules is empty. And mac address of the card changes to what i specify in interfaces. But only untill next reboot.

I checked bios to change faulty mac address but it doesn't give such opportunity (ASUS). I don't have a floppy so bios upgrade is a little hard, but if you think it can help I could try to do this somehow.

What I'm doing right now is to delete z25.persistent-net.rules on leaving system (workaround found here: http://debian.linux.pl/viewtopic.php?t=1209 ), but there must be some cleaner way of doing it. Can you think of something?
Thank you for any help.

Dutch Master · 04-30-2007, 05:20 AM

Sarge is so old, it has issues with modern hardware. I suggest upgrading asap to Etch (i.e. current Stable).

wilku · 04-30-2007, 06:09 AM

This is Etch... 4.0r0, sorry if my Distribution: mislead you

Dutch Master · 04-30-2007, 06:57 AM

Whoops... I should have known, you've stated you have a 2.6.18 kernel, which is the default Etch kernel

Anyway, what does the ifconfig command tell you? It should closely resemble something like this:

Code:

(root)# ifconfig
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:1B:AE:16:51
          inet addr:192.168.1.10  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::230:1bff:feae:1651/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:18315 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:18523 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:12886025 (12.2 MiB)  TX bytes:3932907 (3.7 MiB)
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0xe000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:2448 (2.3 KiB)  TX bytes:2448 (2.3 KiB)

The numerical values of several entries will differ, but that's not really a problem. The format of those entries should be equal. Also, what does

Code:

cat /etc/network/interfaces

tell you? This is mine:

Code:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

wilku · 04-30-2007, 07:13 AM

If I delete z25.persistent-net.rules ifconfig resembles what you have given. interfaces as well, apart from eth1 being eth0 and hwaddress ether (mac here)
If I don't delete this file, I've got only lo running (and more and more mac adresses in the above mentioned file).