Question on changing MAC addresses

[Donald Becker]

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On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 jlhagen@collins.rockwell.com wrote:

> I found an on-line man page for ifconfig( at
> http://matrix.linux-help.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi ) and under
> "  hw class address
>               Set  the hardware address of this interface, if the
>               device driver supports this operation.  The keyword
..
> Is it safe to conclude that Donald's driver for the above cards ( tulip.c ??)
> provides this capability?? I can guess the answer is yes but just want
> to be sure.

All of my Ethernet driver support changing the MAC address when the adapter
is "down".  None of my drivers support changing the station address when the
adapter is running.  The latter limitation could be changed, but doing so
creates a lot of race conditions for no obvious operational benefit.

The only common hardware that supports multiple station addresses is the
Digital Tulip design.  That feature isn't included in most of the Tulip
work-alikes.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210
Annapolis MD 21403


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