Software Ethernet Address?

[Beau James]

In <9267 at brazos.Rice.edu> frank at hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Frank G. Fiamingo) writes:

>To accomplish this we intend to set up a smaller machine, probably a Sun
>3/60 on the same subnet.  This machine will continuously probe Nisca to
>insure that its up.  Should it decide that Nisca is down it will reboot,
>coming back up with Nisca's IP address.  ...
>...
>In short then, we would prefer to make a change that is transparent to the
>users.  To accomplish this it appears that we need to be able to have the
>software of false Nisca report the hardware ethernet address of real
>Nisca.  How can this be done?  Are there other ways to accomplish our
>objectives?

The software can reset the Ethernet address of an interface with the
ifconfig(8) command, as in:

	# ifconfig ie0 ether 8:0:20:xx:yy:zz

Occasionally necessary when upgrading a CPU underneath an application
package that ties its licenses to Ethernet address, since Sun's ID PROM
contains both the CPU type and the Ethernet address.

Beau James				beau at Ultra.COM
Ultra Network Technologies		{sun,ames}!ultra.com!beau