I’m new to using Banana Pi M5 and I’m facing an issue with the MAC address. I’m using the OS image (OS Image: 2023-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-bpi-m5-m2pro-sd-emmc.img.xz).
The problem is that the actual MAC address of my Pi seems to be different from the one displayed by the operating system. I’ve checked the physical sticker on the device and it shows a different address compared to what I see in the OS settings.
I’ve searched for solutions related to MAC address randomization, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I’m wondering if anyone has encountered a similar issue on the Banana Pi M5 with this particular OS image.
Is there a way to confirm if the OS is reading a software-configured address instead of the one stored in the EEPROM?
Are there any recommended solutions to force the OS to use the original MAC address?
Any insights or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for following up on my query. Here’s a detailed explanation of the steps I took to identify the different MAC address issues:
Finding the Original MAC Address I retrieved the original MAC address directly from the sticker along with my Banana Pi M5.
I employed various commands to verify the MAC address displayed by the operating system:
ifconfigip link showcat /sys/class/net/eth0/addresssudo ethtool -P eth0
These commands consistently revealed the same MAC address: 00:15:18:01:81:31.
Examining Configuration Files:
To ensure the OS wasn’t assigning the MAC address manually, I inspected the following configuration files using sudo nano:
/etc/dhcpcd.conf/etc/network/interfaces
Neither file contained any entries suggesting a manual MAC address assignment.
Checking for udev Rules:
I investigated the possibility of udev rules influencing the MAC address by examining the rules directory (sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules), but no relevant rules were found.
I verified that my Raspberry Pi does not have MAC address randomization enabled.
Reviewed the boot configuration file:
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt
No keywords like “mac” or “macaddr” were in the file.
Despite these checks, the displayed MAC address remains 00:15:18:01:81:31, which is concerning for two reasons:
This address appears to be identical to another Banana Pi board, raising the issue of duplicate MAC addresses.
The address of the device sticker doesn’t match the one displayed by the OS.
I hope this detailed explanation clarifies the steps I took. Do you have any further suggestions on investigating this issue and potentially forcing the OS to use the original MAC address stored on the device?
While some Banana Pi models might have a sticker directly on the board, mine came with a separate yellow paper containing the original MAC address.
Unfortunately, I can’t share a photo of that for security reasons.
Ok. But, the discrepancy between the MAC address displayed by the OS (00:15:18:01:81:31) and the one on the yellow paper (original MAC address) is concerning. Additionally, the fact that this same MAC address appears on multiple Pi boards raises further questions. Could you please clarify why this discrepancy might exist and how to ensure the original MAC address?
There is no yellow paper and no original MAC address. About the same mac on every board issue is because the image you flashed is old and have this issue, you can try the latest kernel 4.9 ubuntu or debian image on bananapi wiki, or build the BPI-M5-bsp code and update the build packages to the raspbian image.