HowTo set wired and wifi interfaces to use hardware mac addresses with networkmanager?

English Network/Internet
1

MatLab keeps refusing to start because it claims my “Host ID” is not the one in the license file. I use auto configuration to set this system up, and haven’t messed with network configuration for over a decade. How do I determine if my interfaces are configure to use the hardware mac addresses? How to I configure them to use the hardware mac addresses?

2

You can check the profile definition in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections (or via the NM GUI) for cloned MAC address, and change accordingly as required.

This will show if the MAC is modified explicitly…
ip link
For example, unmodified by NM…

eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:57:84:05 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Modified to ‘3e:c4:ed:96:3c:51’ (note the original permaddr shown as well)…

eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 3e:c4:ed:96:3c:51 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 08:00:27:57:84:05
    altname enp0s3
3

There’s a GUI? What’s it called? Are you talking about the “connection editor”?

4

Yes, the connection editor.

5

I’m confused because when I checked the first time, there was no altname. The mac address shown was a mac address in the range registered with the manufacturer. The mac address MatLab claimed I should be using doesn’t resolve to a manufacturer. I have no idea where it came from.

I just started looking at MatLab, so I don’t know what to expect.

6

I was only answering your query about the physical ‘inbuilt’ MAC and the one you can assign (MAC binding) to an interface on a temporary basis eg using NetworkManager. I have no idea about what MatLab uses. (Some proprietary software calculates a physical hardware ID based on a number of identifiers to mitigate against use of unlicensed copies.)

7

I believe setting the cloned MAC address to permanent will cause it to use the hardware MAC address.

8

As opposed to not setting it and using the hardware MAC address? I only got MatLab in order to play with the examples from Photogrammetric Computer Vision -- Statistics, Geometry, and Reconstruction, so I haven’t been using it a lot. So far, so good.

9

I thought if it wasn’t set to anything, NetworkManager would default to ‘preserve’, which wouldn’t be what you’d want if it previously wasn’t working. If it’s working now, you must have it figured out.

10

Your expectation is consistent with my observation.

I’m guessing what I changed had no impact on MatLab. The MAC address it claimed was mine was in a default file from their product. MatLab apparently lost track of my MAC address.