mac addresses...again

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ed
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#16 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by ed »

another head scratching moment with the boy's computer today, which may or may not be connected to the previous stuff....
Today the machine suddenly announced that windows wasn't activated and that this was a different machine and it should be re-activated by buying a legitimate windows disk. Fortunately his machine had a legit bought disc and I re-activated it with the key on the issue disc.

the only reason I can think of for this to happen is that I had to change the bios boot regime from uefi to legacy in order to let grub do it's thing for the dual boot. If this is the reason I'm still wondering why windows took a week to notice things had changed.

these are strange times we live in.
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#17 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by ed »

This has resurfaced...oh waily...

Now he's running arch linux and the wifi card is doing exactly the same thing it did to begin with under windows, i.e setting itself a new mac address every time it boots.....

I fixed the problem under windows by setting a fixed mac address, but I'm drawing a blank under arch....I've tried all the suggestions that I could find by googling, but to no avail.....

any suggestions would be gratefully received....

In the meantime I've set him up as the only user on the 5ghz band so the mem sahib just turns off the 5ghz when necessary...but it's a band aid at best.
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#18 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by Nick »

Not sure you can do anything as if he has access to root on the box its going to be simple for him to change again. Can you change the router to only allow specified mac addresses, so you have a white list instead of a black list?
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#19 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by ed »

Nick wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 4:15 pm Not sure you can do anything as if he has access to root on the box its going to be simple for him to change again. Can you change the router to only allow specified mac addresses, so you have a white list instead of a black list?
not sure I follow........the router applies parental control to a specific mac address....if I set parental control on his current mac address the moment he reboots with a new mac address the parental control is useless.....I can't predict what the wifi card is going to allocate as a mac address at boot time.

the conf file for the network should contain the control line :
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=yes/no

which should turn randomization on or off....

but which conf file and where to put the actual mac address is foxing me under arch...
for once I have to concede that this job is easier under windows.....more waily..

to my way of thinking the router makes a big assumption in expecting all terminals to keep the same mac address in this day and age.
On reflection I don't see any other way the router would identify a user. If the router allowed IP addresses to be targeted for parental control I suppose it would be workable to force users to apply static addresses to their equipment. I can't see any other way(that's not to say there isn't another way.)
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#20 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by Nick »

not sure I follow........the router applies parental control to a specific mac address....if I set parental control on his current mac address the moment he reboots with a new mac address the parental control is useless.....I can't predict what the wifi card is going to allocate as a mac address at boot time.
If that's what the router does then, it is what it is, but I was suggesting if the router was flexible and you could change the setting via cron scrips (ie if the router was running linux) you could have done it the other way, applied parental control by switching access to machines outside the whitelist on and off. That way all random mac addresses would be caught.

Looks like config files live in /usr/lib/systemd/network/ https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/system ... ss_adapter
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#21 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by brig001 »

Hi Ed,
Which router do you have?
Is its firmware up to date?
Had a quick look at manuals and some can be set be computer name or IP address; does the computer name change when the IP address changes?
Is the computer name set on the PC or as an alias (my terminology) in the router? The router alias is tied to IP address, but computer name isn’t

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#22 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by ed »

mmm...trixy

I was working with the file in /etc/NetworkManager
there is a file named NetworkManager.conf which might need the line I typed earlier..but there is another entry which supplies the mac address but the directory mentioned on all the google pages that I found doesn't exist in arch......

I will continue, feeling like Christian in the slough of despond.....there are still avenues to pursue...

but thanks for looking....I don't want to sound like an ingrate but there is no way I'm going to fiddle with the router code....
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#23 Re: mac addresses...again

Post by Neal »

How old is he and what are you trying to stop him doing? Does he understand MAC addresses and networking? Maybe just talk to him if he’s looking up bad stuff… :bounce:
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