I realize there have been a few topics on this, but it seems to me that this was considered fixed.

 

When using 5.23 with a 4.8 kernel, the MAC address was stable.

 

After upgrading to 5.25, the MAC address was still the same as before. However after an outage, the two boards running 5.25 came up with a new MAC address (two boards still running 5.23 came up with the same MAC address). Then the MAC address seems to change every boot.

 

The problem is that the FiOS router (an ActionTec) I have remembers both the machine name and the MAC address (it nicely creates a DNS entry). If the same name appears with a different MAC address, it ignores the name from DHCP and create a new entry with a made-up name. The router does not let you delete an entry, only rename it. (It is obviously a case of a router trying to be too smart for its own good: why does not it trust the DHCP name to begin with?)

 

So now I have unpredictable IP addresses and names.

 

Searching through google, I found an advice to add "hwaddress ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" to /etc/networks/interfaces. However after setting the MAC address this way (to the original MAC address), the network does not start properly and no new machine is even listed by the router. If I remove the statement, the network starts again.

 

Any advice, or pointer to the right topic, will be appreciated.

Thanks.

I also tried the same MicroSD card on another NanoPi NEO I have (which was not plugged in during the outage), and I see a different MAC addresses on each boot (I tried 3 times).

 

That makes me think that this might not be a hardware issue caused by the outage.

for the record, the latest h3-mainline-ubuntu-core-qte-sd4g-beta-20170228.img has no issue. 

Same here after updating OPI PC.

 

 

 

 

 

My workaround is  `hwaddress ether xx:xx:xx` in `/etc/network/interfaces` file.