Device wlan0 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.

[Kim Lux]

I am having a problem getting a wireless card to work on our server
(acting as a router).  It was working and now it doesn't. 

I've got a Linksys WMP54G wireless card.  (PCI, "G", etc.)  It uses the
Broadcom 4306 hardware.  I used ndiswrapper to install the drivers.  It
worked fine for several days. (I've used ndiswrapper on several machines
with this hardware and it works well for me.)

We physically moved the server and somehow the wireless card got bumped
out of the PCI socket.  Wireless networking didn't work.  I
investigated, put the card back in its socket, but I can't get it to
work again.  I keep getting the following message:

#/etc/init.d/network restart 

Device wlan0 has different MAC Address than expected, ignoring. 

lspci - vvvxxx shows the card talks fine.

ndiswrapper -l states that the driver and hardware are installed (and
presumably talking)

ifconfig -a shows that the device is NOT installed, nor should it be.
(ie there are no ghosts.)

system-config-network shows the device (when a proper ifcfg-wlan0 file
is present) but has the following idiosyncrasies:

1) "Bind to MAC address" is always enabled.  I can't get that to
disable, even when I change "bind" to "no" in ifcfg-wlan0.  

2) The probe button doesn't work, even when I put the correct MAC
address in the field, even with the correct hdware address in ifcfg-
wlan0.

3) When I started troubleshooting this problem, the MAC address field
was empty. 

It bothers me that I can't unbind the MAC address.  I used to install a
network device without a bound address and then probe to get it, then
select bind. 

Any ideas ? I suspect that ndiswrapper is trying to install the driver
with a faulty MAC address.

Is there a way to get the MAC address manually in a Linux system, just
to make sure the card isn't returning 0 or something ? 

 
Kim Lux (Mr.)  Diesel Research Inc