On Monday 23 September 2002 6:08 am, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
The board came with the cmos jumper in the "clear" position, which threw me since it wouldn't come up at first until I spotted this.
Yeah - I hate it when manufacturers do that too.
Anyway, the user space program to set a new MAC address in cmos is attached to this email; it is pretty simple, but has to run as root of course. Maybe we should put this in linuxbios, as an option or something. I wonder how you pick a MAC address? At one time they were assigned in blocks by manufacturer, I thought. I realize they only have to be unique on the subnet, but if you start assigning them randomly and shipping them to customers, what are the odds? Mathematically 1 in 2^48 but by Murphy probably 1 in 2 of a collision :-/ .
Surely they printed the MAC address on a sticky label on one or more of: a) the motherboard b) the ethernet controller / socket c) the manual d) the box the motherboard came in e) a little piece of paper included in the packaging ?
I'm generally used to seeing two labels - one on the motherboard itself, and one on a separate piece of paper that a system assembler can stick on the outside of the final assembled case, in case the end-user ever needs to know the MAC address without booting the machine.
Antony.