Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 11:13:49 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: "Mark J. Taylor" <mtaylor@cybernet.com> Cc: Daniel Eischen <eischen@vigrid.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ifconfig: changing mac address Message-ID: <19990515111348.K89091@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.990514154315.mtaylor@cybernet.com>; from Mark J. Taylor on Fri, May 14, 1999 at 03:43:15PM -0400 References: <199905141918.PAA01313@pcnet1.pcnet.com> <XFMail.990514154315.mtaylor@cybernet.com>
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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
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