From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 14 18:43:58 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFF8314EE3 for ; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:43:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id LAA15909; Sat, 15 May 1999 11:13:52 +0930 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id LAA43652; Sat, 15 May 1999 11:13:49 +0930 (CST) Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 11:13:49 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: "Mark J. Taylor" Cc: Daniel Eischen , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ifconfig: changing mac address Message-ID: <19990515111348.K89091@freebie.lemis.com> References: <199905141918.PAA01313@pcnet1.pcnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: ; from Mark J. Taylor on Fri, May 14, 1999 at 03:43:15PM -0400 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Friday, 14 May 1999 at 15:43:15 -0400, Mark J. Taylor wrote: > On 14-May-99 Daniel Eischen wrote: >>>> Is it possible to change the mac address of an ethernet card using >>>> ifconfig? >>> >>> Not in any 'standard' card, no. Some cards (in SUN workstations) allow >>> you to swap the EEPROM with the mac address, and I'll bet somewhere >>> someone has designed a card with a programmable mac address, but >>> normally it's not settable. >> >> Yeah, we've got some Dy-4 m68k-based single board computers that >> allow the lower 3 bytes of the MAC address to be programmed. It's >> kind of annoying though, because the lower 3 bytes are always >> set to 0 and we have to uniquely set them for each board that >> we deliver to our customer. >> >> The MAC addresses were meant to be unique; why do you want the >> ability to change them? So you can make M$ viruses without >> anyone figuring it out who made them ;-)? > > One of the purposes of changing the MAC address is for server > redundancy. Yes, and in fact Tandem^H^H^H^H^H^HCompaq use this for their NonStop Ethernet. The machine has two ethernet boards. If one goes down, the other assumes its identity. It seems there's a need, and the possibility. Would somebody like to suggest a syntax? Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message