duplicate MAC addresses

[marty <marty@goodoldmarty.com>]

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I got trouble...
(duplicate MAC addresses)

I have a Jetway atom-330 mini-itx board with a builtin NIC and 3-NIC
daughtercard. All 4 NICS are realtek 8169. The software is recent.
The machine works impressively except for described following issues:

The builtin NIC always comes in as eth0 on boot.
The remaining daughtercard NICS have MACS from a different sequence.
On boot all 4 NICS are seen as unique by the kernel and assigned unique
interrupts, (which is very nice).

Enter udev...

On boot udev stalls for 120+ seconds while it executes
i801_smbus functions. This may be a unsupported hardware issue
or other software issue but it is not normal. This may be the problem.

After udev finishes the "70-persistent-net.rules" are borked and eth3 is
assigned the MAC of eth0, causing a duplicate MAC.
On the next boot udev sees the duplicate and renames eth3 to eth3_rename
and the network scripts won't enable it. It becomes useless.

"ip link show" always lists eth3/eth3_rename with the MAC of eth0 as below. Why?

2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state
UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:30:18:ab:4a:8f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state
UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:30:18:ab:6a:46 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: eth2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state
UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:30:18:ab:6a:47 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
5: eth3_rename: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:30:18:ab:4a:8f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

What I really don't know is:
After the kernel probes the hardware and acquires the MACs, where
does it keep that info?
Why doesn't udev use that correct probed kernel info for eth3, rather than
configure eth3 with the MAC of eth0? Why probe the hardware trice?
Where is this going wrong? I suspect i801_smbus...

Marty B.
-- 
An artist who is forced to work a specific schedule, is no longer
an artist; he is just hired help. Inspiration cannot be purchased.


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