System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

kajaman · 2006-03-21 21:48:02

Hi All!

I am having strange problems with my network configuration. First of all, I have laptop with 2 interfaces - eth0 and wlan0. I use network profiles to choose wchich configuration suits me best at particular time.

Ok, so here is the problem:
When I choose from menu at boot time network profile that configures my internet connection via wlan0, and then I try to manually change the MAC address of my ethernet card with:

ifconfig eth0 hw ether my_new_mac_addr

the system stops responding, it simply hangs

But the funniest thing is that when I start the network profile that uses my eth0 card at boot and then try to change eth0's MAC, it works great!

So I figured out that there must be something in startup scripts that in some way "initializes" eth0 to work properly. But browsing threw /etc/rc.d/network and /usr/bin/netcfg gave me nothing.

Does anyone have any suggestions what can cause my system to hang while changing mac address?

cactus · 2006-03-21 22:21:24

Some wireless cards do not support mac cloning (this is also partly the reason why you cannot use VMWare's "bridged" network mode with wireless cards).
Most wired cards have no problem with this.

kajaman · 2006-03-21 22:32:12

cactus wrote:

Some wireless cards do not support mac cloning (this is also partly the reason why you cannot use VMWare's "bridged" network mode with wireless cards).
Most wired cards have no problem with this.

You are right but I'm trying to assign new MAC address to my wired card so...

Well, I just found a bug submitted on Linux bugzilla: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5992

it's quite similiar situation but I use broadcom (b44).

kajaman · 2006-03-21 22:40:16

ok, now I bealieve it's kernel's fault. when just after boot I type:

ifconfig eth0 hw ether my_mac

system hangs immediately.
but when I type just after boot:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1 up
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 hw ether my_mac

everything works well.

So I bealieve the driver doesn't work well when the first call to it from user is request of changing MAC. I'll probably submit that bug to bugzilla. Sorry for posting here, it realy wasn't arch-specific issue as i thought.[/code]

cactus · 2006-03-21 23:12:27

Sorry for my misunderstanding.

kajaman · 2006-03-22 22:35:42

Here is a link to submitted bug:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6268
and there is also available a patch for that bug. Hopefully it will be merged into next kernel release

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-21 21:48:02

System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

#2 2006-03-21 22:21:24

Re: System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

#3 2006-03-21 22:32:12

Re: System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

#4 2006-03-21 22:40:16

Re: System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

#5 2006-03-21 23:12:27

Re: System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

#6 2006-03-22 22:35:42

Re: System hangs while changing MAC address of eth0

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