IP address incorrectly assigned on boot

[Geoffrey Leach]

On 02/03/2012 04:52:39 PM, Rick Stevens wrote:
> On 02/03/2012 02:39 PM, Geoffrey Leach wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> They're supposed to be the same.  The only way to be sure is to
> actually
> see what the driver assigned as the MAC address:
> 
> 	$ cat /sys/class/net/wlan0/address

server
geoff at mtranch[1]->cat /sys/class/net/wlan0/address
00:19:d2:2d:f2:76
client
root at pvr[25]->cat /sys/class/net/wlan0/address
ae:f2:65:4b:b2:16

So -- how do I resolve the difference?
And how does the driver come up with the data?