IP address incorrectly assigned on boot

[Geoffrey Leach]

On 02/03/2012 01:54:34 PM, j.e.aneiros wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Geoffrey Leach <geoff at hughes.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > A system on my local network (pvr) has its IP address in /etc/hosts
> >
> > geoff at pvr[1]->cat /etc/hosts
> > 127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4
> > localhost4.localdomain4
> >
> > 192.168.10.2    pvr.mtranch.com pvr
> > 192.168.10.3    mtranch.mtranch.com mtranch
> > 192.168.10.1    Netgear
> > 198.168.20.5    Homerun
> >
> > Netgear router accessed from pvr via wireless. It has the address
> > 192.168.10.2 reserved and assigned to pvr. Worked fine.  Today 
> after
> > booting up the latest kernel, (3.2.2-1.fc16.i686.PAE), the IP
> address
> > has changed to 192.168.10.5:
> >
> > geoff at pvr[2]->ifconfig wlan0
> > wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr AE:5D:BA:91:67:2D
> >          inet addr:192.168.10.5  Bcast:192.168.10.255
> > Mask:255.255.255.0
> >          inet6 addr: fe80::ac5d:baff:fe91:672d/64 Scope:Link
> >          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
> >          RX packets:484 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> >          TX packets:462 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> >          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
> >
> > you'll note that it is 192.168.10.5
> >
> > Not surprisingly, I can't ssh 192.168.10.2, but I can ssh
> 192.168.10.5
> >
> > Question: where is this (dynamic?) assignment taking place?
> >
> 
> I think the machine is requesting the router a new IP and the router
> couldn't match the MAC of the request with the MAC associated to the
> reserved IP 192.168.10.2, so is giving a new IP in the range.
> Something
> change at the machine, did you check the MAC AE:5D:BA:91:67:2D 
> against
> your
> rule in the router?

Your suspicion was correct. I replaced the one in use with the one from 
ifconfig. Unfortunately that did not fix the problem.

I need a tutorial on assigning MAC addresses, as they are inconsistent 
on the server and client. Is it correct that the MAC address is the 
same as HWADDR in the ifcfg file? And why would the value change when 
the hardware did not?

Thanks.