[ltp] WG511 PCMCIA with 2 Mac addresses (Mandriva)

[Richard Neill]

Dear All,

I wonder whether I could consult the collective wisdom about this. My
Netgear WG511 card works perfectly with the prism54 driver, once the
binary firmware has been loaded.

However, the MAC address (as reported by ifconfig, or udevinfo) changes
between 2 different values depending on status:

1)Without the firmware installed, or before the network interface has
been brought up (for the first time since boot or plugging in the card):
  	00:30:b4:00:00:00

2)Once the firmware has been loaded, and the interface has been  brought
up at least once:
      00:09:5b:c1:3a:b1

The problem is that restarting the network no longer recognises the
card, since the MAC address has now changed:
   "interface 'wlan' not foundDevice wlan has different MAC address
   than expected, ignoring."



All the config tools (iftab, ifcfg-wlan) need to refer to the first
(un-initialised) MAC. But once initialised, they don't recognise the
card anymore.

The simple solution is to cardctl eject, and physically unplug/replug
the card each time I restart the network. But that's ugly!  I think I
need to bind one interface name to 2 different MAC addresses.

Does anyone know the correct solution, or can point me to an appropriate
resource?

Thanks very much,

Richard





-- 
rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk  **  http://www.richardneill.org
Richard Neill, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB21TQ, U.K.