[vox-tech] The incredible moving ethernet adapter

[Bill Kendrick]

So Melissa shipped off her X41 to IBM/Lenovo/whatever to have them
fix the hinge, which was loose when she bought it.  (Yay for extended
warantees, apparently.)

Anyway, when it returned, suddenly the network stopped working.
"ifup eth0" complained that the eth0 device didn't even exist.
"ifconfig" showed only "eth1" (her wireless adapter).

"ifconfig -a" showed "eth2".  Where the hell did that come from?
Well, aside from my not-reading-closely-enough problems ;^) I finally
discovered that the MAC address of the built-in ethernet jack had changed.

When Ubuntu Edgy installed, it apparently decided, since there were two
network adapters, to place the MAC addresses of them inside a file called
"/etc/iftab", which udev uses.

Since the MAC address for the wired NIC had changed, the listing for "eth0"
didn't get used, and hence the wired NIC picked up the next available
slot, "eth2".

I simply had to enter the correct MAC address into /etc/iftab,
then I did an /etc/init.d/networking stop, .../udev restart, and
.../networking start.

Apparently (I finally got hold of the paperwork they sent back with the
laptop after it was repaired), IBM decided to flash the BIOS with a new
revision.  That apparently mucked up the MAC addr.

*Whew!*  That was a close one! :^)

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/