Help: MAC address issue: what I see in Linux is not what is programmed in device

emichaud1968 · 11-26-2010, 10:42 AM

We are having an issue where the MAC address that we see in our device (IP camera) shows up as "0" when we do ifconfig, but if we read the device MAC address directly on the HW device, we get the correct MAC address.

- we don't know how these devices got to this state
- since the MAC address information is there in the device, we're not sure how to get Linux to re-read it or read it correctly.

macemoneta · 11-26-2010, 12:17 PM

Linux gets the MAC address from the Ethernet frame header. Run Wireshark and see what your device is stuffing into the header. It sounds like your device is picking up the wrong address for the stored MAC, and sending random data (which happens to be zeros).