Bug 9560

Summary:	[r8169] changing MAC temporally will set it permanently.
Product:	Drivers	Reporter:	Oleksij Rempel (fishor) (bug-track)
Component:	Network	Assignee:	Francois Romieu (romieu)
Status:	REJECTED INSUFFICIENT_DATA
Severity:	normal	CC:	akpm, alan, protasnb, romieu
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.22 - 2.6.24-rc4	Subsystem:
Regression:	---	Bisected commit-id:
Attachments:	r8169: read MAC address from EEPROM on init

Description Oleksij Rempel (fishor) 2007-12-14 02:39:14 UTC

This bug forwarded from ubuntu bug track, for more details see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/165052

Distribution: ubuntu
Hardware Environment:
PCI devices 0x10ec:0x8168
            0x10ec:0x8167

Problem Description:
Normally changing MAC address will work till next reboot or poweroff - after it will be restored default manufacture MAC, but on this environment it will be changed permanently.

Steps to reproduce:
1. start PC and ifconfig eth0:
   eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1A:4D:##:##:##

2.set new mac: 
   ip l set eth0 addr 04:44:44:44:44:04

3. reboot/poweroff/unplug PC , start again and ifconfig:
   eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 04:44:44:44:44:04
   

especially painful it with XEN which setting up bridge with default mac   FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF

Comment 1 Andrew Morton 2007-12-14 09:25:10 UTC

hm.  Perhaps userspace is remembering the MAC address somewhere
then reestablishing it after boot?

Comment 2 Oleksij Rempel (fishor) 2007-12-23 02:19:02 UTC

No. we have udev script to assign MAC to device name [eth0,eth1,..]. At the same time this issue know only with r8169. Other devices like e1000  working just fine.

Comment 3 Natalie Protasevich 2008-02-17 23:17:08 UTC

The discussion about this problem on lkml:

http://marc.info/?t=116216178600002&r=1&w=2

Is there any update on this bug?
Thanks.

Comment 4 Francois Romieu 2008-09-24 12:43:48 UTC

Created attachment 18014 [details]
r8169: read MAC address from EEPROM on init

It is probably fixed by 2.6.27-rc and the applied patch (courtesy of Ivan Vecera).

-- 
Ueimor