Does your Mac Ethernet/Wireless keep giving you a fake 169.254.x.x ip address?
Recently I started running Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) on my spare computer. It worked fine for a few days until one day when I changed my router, my Mac stopped connecting to the router. It would repeatedly get a 169.254.x.x ip address through DHCP. If I set the IP address manually, it would show that it assigned the IP address, yet it would still not “properly” be connected in the background.
So here is what I did to fix this problem. Open up Terminal using Spotlight. And type the command:
sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
It will then ask you for your password. That’s it.
Explanation:
sudo: Gives you administrative power
ifconfig: the program that interacts with all your connectivity configurations
en0: the interface’s name, it could also be en1, en2, etc. (depending on the amount of network wired/wireless cards you have)
00:11:22:33:44:55: the mac address, pick whatever hex combination (i.e. only use characters 0-9 and a-z)
Please share your experiences.
The MAC address should be your routers MAC address, right? I’m having the same problem and haven’t been able to resolve it yet using your method.
The MAC address can be anything random. If you pick the same as the router, the router will discard it as “fake” since it clearly knows that MAC address is being used by the router (although this is entirely up to the router’s discretion).
I solve the problem doing what you said, but I have to do it always I shutdown my laptop. there is any way to do it automaticly in startup. Other thing that happens to me… if I put a MAC address repeated (used before randomly) my laptop freeze 🙁
Sorry about my english (I’m spanish ^^)
@Alex
I once had the same problem, so I found this great tip by Eric Cronin: http://www.gizmolabs.org/~ecronin/w/Main/OSXSetMac
It sets the mac every time the computer starts up.
Let me know how it works for you or if you need more help.
Maybe i’m doing something wrong. I did what say your link, but i use “ifconfig” at starup and the MAC address doesn’t change. It is not clear at all and I am confused. I did this:
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.gizmolabs.setMAC.plist [file]
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.gizmolabs.setMAC [directory]
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.gizmolabs.setMAC/setmac.sh [file]
I put inside the same (copy & paste) but it doesn’t work. ^^’
some more tips:
– make sure setmac.sh script is executable by anybody. I would do “sudo chmod 777 setmac.sh”
inside setmac.sh
– set the MAC Address (fake one) to one that is actually a MAC address, i.e. make sure it isn’t wrong… like use mine: 12:23:34:45:56:67
– en0 should be changed to your actual ethernet/wireless controller/interface. Do ifconfig to find the right one, and change the script to point to the right interface.