Re: NetworkManager reset MAC address

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2010-09-01 at 16:31 +0200, Jirka Klimes wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 of August 2010 12:26:05 mmsim6 gmail com wrote:
> > I wrote a udev rule to change the MAC address of my wireless card and
> > it worked correctly until I upgraded to
> > NetworkManager-0.8.1-4.git20100817.fc13.x86_64
> > today. Now I find the MAC is reset back to the original address by
> > NetworkManager.
> > How to stop this new feature?
> 
> The new NetworkManager has implemented MAC spoofing feature just for this 
> purpose.
> In connection editor,  on 'Wireless' tab there is a new edit box 'Cloned MAC 
> address'. If you put your desired MAC here, it will be set on an interface 
> when the connection is activated. And you don't need to change your MAC in 
> udev or any other way.
> See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447827

Yeah, though I think if something has set the MAC before NM starts, we
probably want to make NM read that MAC address in as a spoofed MAC when
NM starts.  I'm not sure we do that yet?  Basically respect the
configuration that exists for both permanent MAC and spoofed MAC when NM
starts up if we can.

Dan

> Unfortunately, there is still one glitch in wpa_supplicant that causes WPA 
> connections don't work. I've sent a patch to hostap mailing list fixing that, 
> but no reply yet.
> 
> As a ugly workaround for this WPA problem, you can do this:
> 1. Make sure you set new MAC to 'Cloned MAC address'
> 2. Leave your changing MAC script code as it is
> 3. And add after your MAC changing code this:
> 
> a) the command from Exec= line of /usr/share/dbus-1/system-
> services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service file
> That is:
> /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -B -u -f 
> /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log -P /var/run/wpa_supplicant.pid    (for Fedora)
> 
> /sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s    (for Ubuntu)
> This will start wpa_supplicant. (and NetworkManger won't start it again)
> 
> b)
> python -c 'import dbus; print 
> dbus.SystemBus().call_blocking("fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant", 
> "/fi/epitest/hostap/WPASupplicant", "fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant", 
> "addInterface", "sa{sv}", ("wlan0", {"driver":"wext"}))'
> This will add an interface to wpa_supplicant and that will read your changed 
> MAC.
> (That's the D-Bus call that NM makes internally.)
> 
> These steps has to be done *before* NetworkManager is started.
> 
> Jirka
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