topic Re: Change MAC address in Operating System - HP-UX

Change MAC address

Bravo_1 — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:51:00 GMT

Hi,

I would like to find out if other than using SAM, is there any other way to change a MAC address? ie any configuartion files that can be changed, etc

Thanks in advance!

Re: Change MAC address

Sandy Chen — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:57:56 GMT

Hi,

If you mean IP address, it's on /etc/rc.config.d/netconf

if you really mean for MAC Address, then I would love to know any way to change it.

Regards,
Sandy

Re: Change MAC address

Luk Vandenbussche — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:04:07 GMT

Why will you do this.
A MAC address is unique to a network card.

Re: Change MAC address

vinu_2 — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:06:29 GMT

Hi bravo,

For getting the mac addresss follow the folowing steps:

1. As the root user (or user with appropriate permissions)

2. Type "/usr/sbin/lanscan"
From the displayed information, find lan0 (this is the default first Ethernet adapter)
3. Locate the number below Address. This is your MAC address The MAC Address will be displayed in the form of 0x000E7F0D81D6 -- the leading hexadecimal indicator should be removed. For this example, the actual MAC Address would be 00:0E:7F:0D:81:D6.

As per my knowledge we cannot change the mac address because its factory made.

Thanks and regards,

Vinu

Re: Change MAC address

AwadheshPandey — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:07:11 GMT

Bravo,

Mac address of network card is unique and vendor specific. I belive you cant change it.
if u mean the ip_address then you can change it with set_parms ip_address

Regards,

Awadhehs

Re: Change MAC address

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:31:06 GMT

Shalom,

Well lanscan will of course show you the address. I'm not sure the OS itself supports changing it, at least from the response center will help perspective.

http://docs.hp.com/en/B5502-90006/B5502-90006.pdf
lanadmin can apparently be used to do this job.

SEP

Re: Change MAC address

whiteknight — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:00:18 GMT

Hi Bravo,

The System Administration Manager (SAM) updates the
/etc/rc.config.d/hpetherconf file, whereas lanadmin -A does not.

If the file exists, the contents are read and assigned mac addresses
for network cards. If the file does not exist, the mac address is
read off the card.

To change the mac address in SAM:

1. On the network and communication menu, select network interface card.

2. Select card.

3. Do ACTION configure.

4. Make the mac address changes in the Advance options portion. <<=

Again, we don't usually change it as it is a unique number (hardcoded by factory)

Re: Change MAC address

Steven Schweda — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:01:03 GMT

Many modern Ethernet cards can have their
hardware addresses changed, usually using a
vendor-specific utility program which runs on
x86 hardware. The manufacturer can normally
be trusted to assign a unique number when
the card is made. Most other folks are less
reliable. One reason to want to do it is a
hardware failure on a system where some
software product's license enforcement is
tied to the Ethernet card's hardware address.
Many _very_ old cards had plug-in PROM chips
which could be swapped around when the card
was replaced.

> [...] change a MAC address?

Why?

Re: Change MAC address

A. Clay Stephenson — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:03:54 GMT

You don't need SAM at all. Find the Ethernet configuration applicable to your NIC and OS version (hpetherconf, btlanconf, ...) in /etc/rc.config.d. If applicable there will be a value something like HP_BTLAN_STATION_ADDRESS[0]=
When blank, the logical MAC address is that of the physical MAC (ie. what is on the card itself) but if not blank, the logical MAC address becomes the value supplied. You can then run lanadmin -A 0x01234567890AB but it's best to actually reboot so that you are certain of your changes in the config file.

Now, why are you doing this? If you are trying to "out bushwhack" licensing that was based upon the old MAC address (which is normally the only reason you would want to do this) then that may or may not be successful. I've seen some license monitors which read the physical MAC no matter what the logical value is.

Re: Change MAC address

Juan M Leon — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:09:01 GMT

I believe on SUN machines you can clone the MAC address via eprom, hoever I don't think you can do the same on HPUX servers.

Good luck

Re: Change MAC address

Bravo_1 — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:12:15 GMT

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the info! The reason is because, in my system, we have a sudden change of mac address detected by the router and was puzzled how it happened. To my knowledge, no one would really wan to change a mac address. So I wanted to see if there was any configuration files to check for any corruption or error.

Regards

Re: Change MAC address

A. Clay Stephenson — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:10:19 GMT

I suspect that what really happened is that at some point the same IP address was found associated with different MAC addresses --- not at all uncommon in a DHCP environment or if someone made a booboo.

Re: Change MAC address

Bravo_1 — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:10:40 GMT

AC,

do you mean software error or bug? In my case, the IP is fixed. We have changed the entire router hope it will solve the problem.

Thanks again!

Re: Change MAC address

A. Clay Stephenson — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:17:29 GMT

It could simply mean that someone assigned the same IP address to two different hosts briefly. The router doesn't have a clue that it was your host --- all it would know that at one time IP address 10.1.2.3 was associated with MAC address 0x1234567890AB and then it saw that IP address 10.1.2.3 was associated with MAC Address 0xBA0987654321. You message was probably informational only.

Re: Change MAC address

Bravo_1 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:17:50 GMT

Thanks alot guys!

Re: Change MAC address

Bravo_1 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:19:58 GMT

Thanks alot!

Re: Change MAC address

rick jones — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:19:18 GMT

Strictly speaking, the MAC address isn't "changed." Rather the MAC address used by the card is overridden. If you were to pull the card and put it into another system it would revert to the MAC address "permanently" configured into the card.