On Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 5:18 AM Reco <recovery...@enotuniq.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 05:30:10PM -0600, Flacusbigotis wrote:
> .....
> > > If the MAC address of the NIC is not persistent, that means udev will
> > > provide you with different interface name each time you boot.
> > > That means that you've hit yet another case of unpredictability of so
> > > called Predictable Network Interface Names.
> > >
> > I did not have this problem in Debian 10. I do not know if the card's
> > driver has changed between the two versions of Debian, so I am going to
> > boot into a Debian 10 live image and see if it displays the same
> behavior.
>
> It's possible, of course. What's also possible is card's EEPROM may have
> gone haywire. I had a similar problem back in the day with rtl8139 NIC,
> IIRC. One day the thing simply started to assign itself a random MAC
> (but worked in every other regard), and since the thing was a part of
> the motherboard - I had to try almost every workaround in the existence.
>
And you checked to make certain that really really really no firmware
upgrades took place in the meantime? Or downgrades? Not even from some
dual-booted OS on the same box?
> If the drivers are the same then the issue was probably introduced by the
> > changes made to start using ".link" vs .rules" files.
>
> ".link" and ".rules" are merely means to configure udev, they mean
> nothing to the kernel. By default udev should not randomize NIC's MAC.
>
>
> > > > I also tried adding a udev file (/etc/udev/rules.d/99_fix_usb.rules)
> with
> > > > the following content to try to force the addr_assign_type to 0, but
> this
> > > > did nothing:
> > > >
> > > > SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SUBSYSTEM=="net", ATTR{addr_assign_type}="0"
> > >
> > > Try this:
> > >
> > > 1) Create a file called /etc/systemd/network/00-usb.link with the
> following
> > > contents:
> > >
> > > [Match]
> > > Driver=ax88179_178a
> > >
> > > [Link]
> > > MACAddressPolicy=none
> > > NamePolicy=kernel
> > >
> > > You may have to create an appropriate directory, and the file name has
> > > to start with double zeroes.
> > >
> > > 2) Invoke (really needed):
> > >
> > > update-initramfs -k all -u
> > >
> > > 3) Reboot.
> > >
> > > 4) Watch your network interface is called usb0 from now then.
> > >
> > > Thanks!
>
> You're welcome.
>
>
> > > Now, this approach has its caveats, so:
> > >
> > > 1) If you ever plug-in two USB devices that both served with
> > > "ax88179_178a" - you won't be able to distinguish between them. They
> > > will be called usb0, usb1, etc without any meaningful order.
> > >
> > > Ugghhh.. I am not entirely comfortable with that.
> >
> >
> > > 2) If they decide to rename "ax88179_178a" in the kernel - this link
> > > file will cease to work for obvious reasons.
> > >
> > > Also not comfortable with this.
> >
> > I'll first check if I can replicate the behavior in Buster.
>
> IIRC in Buster .link files are ignored if 73-usb-net-by-mac.rules apply
> to the NIC. But you can cheat it by creating an empty file called:
> /etc/udev/rules.d/73-usb-net-by-mac.rules
>
> Reco
>
>
