[Voyage-linux] 0.6.5 munging MAC on wireless

[Edwin Whitelaw]

Ronald,

Thanks for the reply.  I really wasn't aware of the changes - just the 
result.  I'll probably go back to 0.5 as it will do what I need from 
this system.

Edwin

On 1/13/2011 3:32 PM, Velt, R. (Ronald) in 't wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:
>> voyage-linux-bounces+ronald.intvelt=tno.nl at list.voyage.hk
>> [mailto:voyage-linux-bounces+ronald.intvelt=tno.nl at list.voyage.
>> hk] On Behalf Of Edwin Whitelaw
>> Sent: donderdag 13 januari 2011 20:10
>> To: Voyage-linux at voyage.hk
>> Subject: [Voyage-linux] 0.6.5 munging MAC on wireless
>>
>> I've noticed recently that version 0.6.5 has changed the first
>> field of the MAC on my radio from 00 to 06, the remainder
>> staying the same.
>> Never saw this on older releases and it's causing connection issues.
>>
>> Anyone else seen this?  Cause?  Fix?
> Yup. I bet your card is based on an Atheros chip set and it's using MadWifi (ath_pci and friends) as a device driver. As of 0.6.2, Voyage ships with MadWifi trunk instead of MadWifi 0.9.4 branch. (See CHANGELOG). Trunk has this "feature" of giving each VAP (virtual interface) its own MAC address. It does this by counting up in the bits directly to the left of the U/L and I/G bits in the leftmost byte of the MAC address. Oddly enough, the counting starts at 1 (hence the '6'), not 0.
>
> Fix: Er ... While you could try compiling MadWifi 0.9.4 for this version of Voyage (which has a 2.6.30 kernel), IMO the re-introduction of old bugs outweighs the advantage of getting rid of the MAC address change. Or you could try ath5k instead of MadWifi. (But in that case I would migrate to a 2.6.32 kernel as found in the Voyage 0.7 daily build).
>
>> ----------
>> schaeffer-ld:~# ifconfig | grep th -A1
>> ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 06:0b:6b:2d:c6:52
>>            inet addr:10.220.203.2  Bcast:10.220.203.255
>> Mask:255.255.255.0
>> ------------
>>
>> The Wistron card's real MAC is starts with 00.  Happens with
>> other vendor's radios as well.
> All Atheros based, I guess.
>
> Cheers,
> Ronald in 't Velt
>
> TNO
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>
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Edwin Whitelaw, P.E.
New River Valley Unwired, LLC
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