Bug 117511 – MAC Address section needs updating (needs emerge macchanger for anything mac-related)

• Product: [OLD] Docs-user
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description calculuspenguin 2006-01-02 16:15:26 UTC]

Under the MAC Address section, the handbook says "You don't need to emerge anything for changing the MAC address of your interface if you change to a specific address."  I tried the example the handbook had and restarted the network init script (/etc/init.d/net.eth0 restart) and my MAC address did not change.  I looked at /etc/conf.d/net.example and it said to emerge net-analyzer/macchanger in order to set a specific MAC address.  I emerged macchanger and then restarted my init script (/etc/init.d/net.eth0 restart) and it changed my MAC address successfully.  There was even output that confirmed that it changed my MAC address "Changing MAC address of eth0 ... [ok]".  The correction needed to correct this would be something along the lines of "You need to emerge net-analyzer/macchanger in order to change the MAC address of your interface."

[Comment 1 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 16:27:02 UTC]

*** Bug 117514 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 2 nm (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 21:25:51 UTC]

(In reply to comment #0)
I use baselayout 1.11.13-r1 (stable x86), and I have no calls to macchanger in my init.d/net. script. It doesn't even check for MAC address, let alone changes to it. conf.d/net.example does show the supposed functionality, but the actual init script doesn't have any calls to macchanger.

How exactly does this work? What baselayout version actually works with macchanger?

[Comment 3 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 21:59:05 UTC]

"You don't need to emerge anything for changing the MAC address of your interface if you change to a specific address. However, if you need to change to a random address or a random address of a given type then you need to emerge net-analyzer/macchanger."

You must have set it up to randomize the MAC address without having macchanger - and that probably was the cause of your problems. I've tested it on my machine, Gentoo has no problem to set to a static MAC address without having macchanger installed.

Feel free to reopen if you don't think it may have been the real cause of your trouble.

[Comment 4 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 22:25:58 UTC]

BTW, before i close it for good:

Which baselayout version you have? 

In unstable (1.12.0_pre12) which i use this problem doesn't seem to happen. 
In stable version (1.11.13-r1) it seems to be reproducible (i had two people who confirmed that).
Maybe UberLord can put more light on this weird issue?

[Comment 5 SpanKY 2006-01-02 22:56:52 UTC]

might want to test 1.11.14 to be sure

[Comment 6 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 23:08:58 UTC]

Confirmed to work with 1.11.14, thanks vapier.

[Comment 7 Roy Marples (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 23:28:43 UTC]

baselayout-1.11 requires macchanger to change to a specific address.
baselayout-1.12 does not have this limitation.

[Comment 8 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) 2006-01-02 23:33:55 UTC]

Added relevant information to the doc. Thanks for reporting and apologies for closing it too quickly.