[gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[daid kahl]

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I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless MAC
address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using my
hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using NetworkManager, but I also
installed Wicd to see if I could avoid the problem that way.  The problem
seems to lie in the WEP password authentication to the local network.

NetworkManager just kept asking for the password over and over again, never
connecting.  Wicd will claim to connect and issue an IP address, but the
wireless does not function.  In fact, if I give Wicd a faulty WEP password,
it still claims to connect and to issue me an IP address, and it's always
the same IP address, even after a reboot.  Trying NetworkManager again, now
it either fails to connect, just kees trying for a very long time with no
results, or nm-applet crashes and I have to restart the NM daemon.

I know there are no strange network problems (or blocks on my MAC address,
for example) because I can connect with other operating systems just fine,
which, incidentally, is not using the same wireless IP address.

I'd provide more technical information, but I'm not sure what things are
useful.  I checked lshal and confirmed my hardware MAC is correct.

Any ideas of how to reset the wireless settings or resume the connection
would be very helpful.

~daid

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Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[William Kenworthy]

Try shutting it down, remove power (actually unplug it - most moderm
MB's stay live when supposedly off)

Wait 10 minutes and apply power and boot.

Its probable the hardware and software are now confused and need a clean
start.

BillK


)On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 20:05 +0900, daid kahl wrote:
> I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless
> MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using
> my hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using NetworkManager, but
> I

Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[daid kahl]

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>
> )On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 20:05 +0900, daid kahl wrote:
> > I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless
> > MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using
> > my hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using NetworkManager, but
> > I
>
> Try shutting it down, remove power (actually unplug it - most moderm
> MB's stay live when supposedly off)
>
> Wait 10 minutes and apply power and boot.
>
> Its probable the hardware and software are now confused and need a clean
> start.
>
> BillK
>
> Like I said, I can use the wireless card just fine in other operating
systems if I reboot, so it's not hardware.  I did give your solution a go,
but no such luck.

The problem is that when the MAC address was randomly changed, it's given me
an IP address assigned to the region near Marina del Rey, California.  As it
turns out, I'm in Tokyo, and probably my wireless router is not happy about
talking to the wireless IP my computer insists to assign itself.

I've been trying to configure it all manually, since that way maybe I can
assign myself a more reasonable IP address, and then if I later use wicd or
NetworkManager it won't try to use the bad address.  On accident I brought
up wifi0 with no configurations, and you can see what it's doing

 * Bringing up interface wifi0
 *   No configuration specified; defaulting to DHCP
 *   dhcp ...
 *     Running dhcpcd ...
wifi0: dhcpcd 4.0.2 starting
wifi0: broadcasting for a lease
wifi0: timed out
wifi0: probing for an IPV4LL address
wifi0: checking 169.254.62.179 is available on attached networks
wifi0: using IPv4LL address
169.254.62.179                                                        [ ok ]
 *     received address 169.254.62.179/16

I'm not concerned if you have this IP, because this is the non-functional
California IP that my computer continues to assign itself in Gentoo.  Is
there a way to reset my IPv4 LL address?  Clearly the computer stored this
IP address somewhere and it needs to be wiped, or replaced with something
more suitable for this network.

~daid

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Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[daid kahl]

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2009/2/15 daid kahl <daidxor@gmail.com>

> )On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 20:05 +0900, daid kahl wrote:
>> > I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless
>> > MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using
>> > my hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using NetworkManager, but
>> > I
>>
>>
>> Well, no obvious solutions after 7 hours of actively trying things, so
I'll restore from backup.

For those interested, I deleted files from /var/lib/dhcpbd, and this allowed
me to get new IP addresses, but all within the faulty subdomain of
California.  I tried on another wireless networks, and still my machine
tries to assign me an IP within the California domain.  I reinstalled my
entire networking software (short of a kernel recompile), and deleted and
remade any network configuration files I could find that might be relevant,
and still the problem persisted.   I used wicd to assign myself static IP
and DNS with known values that are functional, and then the network was
recognized, but I could not access anything.

I have a backup of the current system, so if anyone is really really
interested in this subject, I could restore and toy around some more.  But I
have to recommend against using macchanger without a very recent backup of
your system.  I'd file a bug report, but what would I say?  I don't know
what file was actually being affected, so I can't offer any useful insight.

~daid

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Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[Mick]

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On Sunday 15 February 2009, daid kahl wrote:

> wifi0: probing for an IPV4LL address
> wifi0: checking 169.254.62.179 is available on attached networks
> wifi0: using IPv4LL address
> 169.254.62.179                                                        [ ok
> ] *     received address 169.254.62.179/16
>
> I'm not concerned if you have this IP, because this is the non-functional
> California IP that my computer continues to assign itself in Gentoo.  

No I don't think it is.  You have compiled dhcpcd with zeroconf enabled and if 
it takes too long to get an ip address from your wireless router the zeroconf 
kicks in and assigns one of the private addresses reserved for this purpose.  
You could try recompiling dhcpcd without zeroconf and see what happens.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[Shawn Haggett]

daid kahl wrote:
>
>
> 2009/2/15 daid kahl <daidxor@gmail.com <mailto:daidxor@gmail.com>>
>
>         )On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 20:05 +0900, daid kahl wrote:
>         > I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my
>         Wireless
>         > MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though
>         I'm using
>         > my hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using
>         NetworkManager, but
>         > I
>
>
> Well, no obvious solutions after 7 hours of actively trying things, so 
> I'll restore from backup. 
>
> For those interested, I deleted files from /var/lib/dhcpbd, and this 
> allowed me to get new IP addresses, but all within the faulty 
> subdomain of California.  I tried on another wireless networks, and 
> still my machine tries to assign me an IP within the California 
> domain.  I reinstalled my entire networking software (short of a 
> kernel recompile), and deleted and remade any network configuration 
> files I could find that might be relevant, and still the problem 
> persisted.   I used wicd to assign myself static IP and DNS with known 
> values that are functional, and then the network was recognized, but I 
> could not access anything. 
>
It's not a California address. It's an IPv4LL address, used when a dhcp 
server can't be found adn is related to the zeroconf useflag the other 
poster mentioned. Read: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking

Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[daid kahl]

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2009/2/15 Shawn Haggett <podge@podgeweb.com>

> daid kahl wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 2009/2/15 daid kahl <daidxor@gmail.com <mailto:daidxor@gmail.com>>
>>
>>        )On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 20:05 +0900, daid kahl wrote:
>>        > I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my
>>        Wireless
>>        > MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though
>>        I'm using
>>        > my hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using
>>        NetworkManager, but
>>        > I
>>
>>
>> Well, no obvious solutions after 7 hours of actively trying things, so
>> I'll restore from backup.
>> For those interested, I deleted files from /var/lib/dhcpbd, and this
>> allowed me to get new IP addresses, but all within the faulty subdomain of
>> California.  I tried on another wireless networks, and still my machine
>> tries to assign me an IP within the California domain.  I reinstalled my
>> entire networking software (short of a kernel recompile), and deleted and
>> remade any network configuration files I could find that might be relevant,
>> and still the problem persisted.   I used wicd to assign myself static IP
>> and DNS with known values that are functional, and then the network was
>> recognized, but I could not access anything.
>>
> It's not a California address. It's an IPv4LL address, used when a dhcp
> server can't be found adn is related to the zeroconf useflag the other
> poster mentioned. Read:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking
>
> So it is.  I was looking up regions and IP addresses trying to figure out
what kind of IP I had.  In any case, I tried installing dhcpcd with the
-zeroconf useflag, and I was still getting this sort of IP, so I don't think
it's quite as simple as that.  This then relates to my earlier query of how
one resets a IP v4 LL address.  Or perhaps changing the MAC address *does*
reset the IP v4 LL address, but then the question becomes, how can you get
back the behavior of letting the network give you an address, which is
removed or altered by a change of MAC.

~daid

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Re: [gentoo-user] Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[Mick]

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On Sunday 15 February 2009, daid kahl wrote:

> what kind of IP I had.  In any case, I tried installing dhcpcd with the
> -zeroconf useflag, and I was still getting this sort of IP, so I don't
> think it's quite as simple as that.  

Run dhcpcd -k to flush out any previous IP addresses.

> This then relates to my earlier query 
> of how one resets a IP v4 LL address.  Or perhaps changing the MAC address
> *does* reset the IP v4 LL address, but then the question becomes, how can
> you get back the behavior of letting the network give you an address, which
> is removed or altered by a change of MAC.

Run dhcpcd -T to see what the dhcp server or your router returns - or if it 
times out.

Symptoms like this are often related to buggy wireless NIC drivers, or a weak 
signal between PC and router.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[daid kahl]

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2009/2/14 daid kahl <daidxor@gmail.com>

> I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless MAC
> address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using my
> hardware MAC address again.  I'm usually using NetworkManager, but I also
> installed Wicd to see if I could avoid the problem that way.  The problem
> seems to lie in the WEP password authentication to the local network.
>
> NetworkManager just kept asking for the password over and over again, never
> connecting.  Wicd will claim to connect and issue an IP address, but the
> wireless does not function.


I'm a dolt; the problem was that the gnome default keyring got mucked up by
the changed MAC (which you could probably anticipate), and then that's why
NetworkManager stopped working.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I
took a backup copy of ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default* and now it's fine again.
Probably you could delete these files and then the nm-applet will make them
again, but I'm lazy.

I still didn't get wicd working, but I never had that working before, so
that's probably a configuration issue, and in any case clearly unrelated to
toying around with my MAC address (since I installed wicd later anyway); I
originally though since NM was also assigning the default IP addresses that
it might be related, but that's because I'm inexperienced.

I'm a little embarassed that the solution was so easy and obvious and I
bothered everyone.  But I did learn some things in the process, so I
appreciate the feedback a lot.  So, as I eventually move to use wicd, the
comments here will be helpful for me.

Regards,
daid

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Tue, February 17, 2009 6:19 am, daid kahl wrote:
> 2009/2/14 daid kahl <daidxor@gmail.com>
<snip>
> I'm a little embarassed that the solution was so easy and obvious and I
> bothered everyone.  But I did learn some things in the process, so I
> appreciate the feedback a lot.  So, as I eventually move to use wicd, the
> comments here will be helpful for me.

There is no such thing as a stupid question, there are only stupid answers.
And as you said, you learned some things in the process and so did other
people on this list.

Glad you got it working again.

One piece of advice, not all wireless network devices work well when
changing the MAC-address as the hardware might filter out the messages
before the software network stack gets to play with it.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Fake MAC Address Bungling Wireless

[Stroller]

On 17 Feb 2009, at 11:00, Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> On Tue, February 17, 2009 6:19 am, daid kahl wrote:
> ...
> There is no such thing as a stupid question, there are only stupid  
> answers.
> And as you said, you learned some things in the process and so did  
> other
> people on this list.

+1

Thank you to you both.

Daid: I appreciated it that you posted back with your solution.
Who knows? I may appreciate discovering your answer when googling my  
problem years from now.

Stroller.