Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 222866
impossible to network 2 or more servers
Last modified: 2007-11-16 20:14:55 EST
Description of problem: main board Tyan S2925 Tomcat chipset nVidia gForce Pro 3400 with MP55 Lan after install of linux ES or WS the network card reports a MAC address of 66:77:44:22:33:11, of course incorect, this causes problems with our application which requires MAC address verification, also we cannot put more than one server attached to the same switch because of this Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.6.9-42 also tried kernel update to 2.6.9-44 latest one How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install Redhat 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
Sorry, this is a pain of a problem. At its root this is a BIOS problem. several Bios's have been released for the nVidia chipset in which the MAC address for the ethernet interface is backwards. A fix was issued for the forcedeth driver which reverses and re-stores the MAC address so that its format is correct. Unfortunately, some bioses try to correct this already (for instance, if you use pxe boot to install these systems, the pxe rom, may already do this fixup). The result is that the forcedeth driver then winds up re-breaking the fix, which then gets recognized as a bad MAC adress, and replaced with something clearly wrong (as you have observed above). Theres nothing that we can really do to universally fix this but some options are: 1) Contact your vendor for a bios update to correct this problem. This is the most correct solution, and a quick browse to tyans website indicates two bios updates, which seem to have some relevance to pxe booting. If you use pxe, you should definately investigate this. 2) Install the system without using pxe (if you are). Install the system locally, and that may allow the forcedeth driver to do the appropriate fixup for you. 3) Assign an LAA to the forcedeth device on the commandline during install, and subsequent boots. Not a pretty solution, but it will get you moving forward again, until you can implement (1) or (2).
Perhaps the driver can be a bit smarter about reversing the ethernet address. Each vendor has MAC address prefix(s) assigned to them, the driver could use this to figure out whether the ethernet address is reversed already or not.