Re: forcedeth generates Invalid MAC address message
On Sunday 11 November 2007, Eugen Dedu wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The first byte of your MAC address is 1d, i.e. 00011101. On
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_address (the figure): if the last bit
> of the 1st byte is 1, then it is a multicast address, NOT a unicast one.
> As such, it cannot be the "main" address of a NIC. Maybe the address
> reading has a problem? On some laptops, the MAC address is printed on
> the back side of the laptop. Can you look at it?
>
> You can also use http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml to
> find out the enterprise which has built a NIC.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Eugen Dedu
Hi,
No luck on the MAC addresses being printed on the bottom. I've tried to
locate the chip on the IEEE website without luck. It looks like the MAC
address that is getting posted on both machines is in a reverse byte order.
When I call up the MAC address on the Windows side of the computer the byte
order is reversed. As a result, the first three bytes of my MAC address are
00-1B-38. According to IEEE these MAC addresses are assigned to COMPAL
ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGIC CO., LTD.
Judging from what I am reading, Nvidia chips had issues with reporting their
MAC addresses. As a result, forcedeth swaps the bytes. The board in the
computer claims to be Nvidia, but the chip is registered to Compal. In
looking up the chipset in hardware for linux
http://hardware4linux.info/component/15830/
I get pointed to a different driver for the NIC. (r8169) But the kernel does
not seem realize this during the boot process. As a result, it calls
forcedeth and forcedeth swaps the byte order. I am baffled on how to
override this selection. I've already tried blacklisting forcedeth
in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and adding r8169 into /etc/modules but it seems
to load the forcedeth module regardless of the fact that it is blacklisted.
I have also tried moving forcedeth.ko from the kernel/drivers/net/ directory
but without luck. forcedeth gets loaded as a module anyway. This problem
happens as soon as forcedeth tries to initialize the NIC. I'm not certain
what to try next. Any suggestions?
Reply to: