Behaviour when ethernet MAC is 00:00:00:00:00:00 ?

[Michael Wiktowy]

On Nov 19, 2007 11:52 AM, Denis Leroy <denis at poolshark.org> wrote:
> Gilboa Davara wrote:
> typically the MAC address is programmed into an on-board eeprom
> connected to the NIC. That's probably what's fried (or simply erased).

I have never seen a BIOS update clear the MAC either ... that is why I
am surprised at this.
I do have a second NIC that is on the mobo that works fine so I have a
work-around.

Oddly enough, the forgetful NIC does seem to work properly once Fedora
boots up. The issue is that I can't rely on MAC address identification
to allow my router to assign the same address (and forward ports to
it) using DHCP since NetworkManager is picking a random MAC and slowly
incrementing the ethX device every boot. The secondary issue is that
it is making a mess in my /etc/sysconfig/networking/ directory by not
clearing out old entries.

The only indication I get that it is getting cleared is that Windows
reports it as having a MAC of 00:00:00:00:00:00.

I was just wondering if there was another way to address a NIC (PCI
ID?) to be able to assign it a consistent MAC on each boot.

/Mike