I understand that it not possible to change the physical MAC address of a network adapter but is it possible to change its MAC address at the software level. I have tried via: "ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:4F:49:1D:8B:5E" (for example) but I get the response "device or resource busy" and the MAC address remains the same. Does anybody know of an alternative method? The problem is that the ethernet facility on my motherboard seems to think that its MAC address is: 00:00:00:00:00:00 and in linux I can't get internet!

You need to "ifconfig eth0 down" first, then change the MAC, and "ifconfig eth0 up" to use it.

Thanks Jake for the tip. However, after up-ing the eth0 after the MAC switch, I can't seem to get the connection at all.... Anymore advice would be really appreciated, Dave

Did you reconfigure the IP address after up-ing it? If you use DHCP, you'll probably want to kill and relaunch dhcpcd or possibly dhclient. For static IPs, use ifconfig.

You are absolutely right - I did not. Could you tell me what I would type to kill and relaunch the DHCP facility? Sorry to be so high maintenance, but I'm learning linux piece by piece! Dave

killall dhcpcd dhcpcd or if you use dhclient (you can use "ps ax" to list running processes and find out) killall dhclient dhclient

Thanks Jake - that worked perfectly! Dave