[CentOS] centso 5 modifying my ifcfg-eth[x] files

[Les Mikesell]

Ralph Angenendt wrote:
> Jerry Geis wrote:
>> Only thing to add here is the network card does work, however I
>> get a dmesg output that eth1 has an invalid MAC address.
> 
> Asus mainboard? 
> 
>> Is that invalid MAC address changing my setup? I dont think it should.
>> granted I'm still looking at finding a way to reset he MAC address or
>> something but I dont think the ifcfg-eth files should be modified.
> 
> The random address is different from the one which is in ifcfg-eth* from
> installation. 
> 
>> This seems like a bug- that is the reason for the post.
> 
> Yes. Googling around hints at this being a BIOS bug. Also see
> <http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=1949>.

Can you fix this by removing the:
HWADDR=
line from the ifcfg-eth* files?  Most of my machines have swappable 
drive carriers and I routinely swap them and clone machines by dd'ing 
the raw disks.  If I remove the HWADDR entry I can assign the IP 
addresses when building the disks and have it come up correctly when the 
disk is installed in some remote machine.  I suppose someday this will 
break when I'm not looking, but it has saved me a lot of trouble over 
the last several years.  Now if the kernels would just be consistent 
about the order they probe the devices and assign the eth* names....

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com