New MAC Address at Reboot

Hi,

i have a little big problem ;)
i've installed emdebian to my dockstar nand. everything works but at each reboot ( at the moment quiet often ^^ ) my eth0 gets a new mac address...
i've created a /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persisten-net.rules whit this content:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="02:50:43:7f:81:16", NAME="eth0"

so i should get everytime the same mac address?

have someone the same problems? or am i doing something wrong??
please help me ;)


p.s: excuse my bad english.....

From what I understand, the line you put in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persisten-net.rules should make it so that if the system detects mac address 02:50:43:7f:81:16, it assigns that adapter the device name "eth0".

I have no idea why your mac address would change, though. Oh, and if it did change, then I think it would come up as eth1, since eth0 would be reserved for the previous mac address. Does your /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persisten-net.rules file keep getting new entries each time you reboot?

The MAC address is set by the boot loader, which gets it from the ethaddr environment variable. If this variable is not set, then a random "locally administered" address is used (starting with 02:). Use fw_setenv to set the ethaddr variable. The original address is printed on the underside of the Dockstar, just add the colons:

fw_setenv ethaddr 00:01:02:03:04:05

Johannes,

I used fw_setenv ethaddr 00:01:02:03:04:05 (replacing the MAC address with the original printed underside the Dockstar), and tried to reboot it afterwards, but it no longer boots from USB or NAND.

Do you have any suggestion for me to resurrect my bricked Dockstar?

Is constructing a connection as explained here: http://www.yourwarrantyisvoid.com/2010/07/21/seagate-dockstar-add-an-accessible-serial-port/ necessary (and sufficient)?

Thanks in advance!

Are you sure it's not booting? Most likely, if you changed the MAC address, your router is giving it a new IP address. Check to make sure it's not just getting a different IP address than you're expecting.

Yes, I am sure that it is not booting. I checked it from the router and it never requests an address.

The led of the Dockstar continuously flashes (and never stops), when the usb stick is inserted its led never flashes (i.e. no read/write activity on the usb stick).

I am puzzled too about how asking it to use a fixed mac address could render it unbootable but I literally did not do anything other than giving this command and rebooting it. Needless to say I am a complete noob with Dockstar (or embedded systems, u-boot, etc.) but I am quite experienced in *nix and programming on it otherwise.

The only thing I can suggest is that perhaps you inadvertently coded a non-hexadecimal character in one of the MAC hextets, or perhaps typed a semi-colon instead of a colon, or put in a space -- something like that. That's why altering the uboot (or even its parameters) is potentially dangerous.

I'm not sure whether you'd even be able to use the netconsole, if you have configured it, since it also uses the ethernet for this purpose. Thus, I think configuring a serial cable is your next logical option.

Good luck, and let us know what you find.