power failure caused MAC address reset?

Hello, I think I have a bit of an odd issue here. I’ve run piaware for months now as normal usually setup on an uninterruptible power supply with the other network gear. Naturally this means the one time I would have a breaker trip in my house was when it wasn’t hooked into the UPS while I was working on other projects.

So here’s what I’ve got, I set my router to reserve DHCP 192.168.1.121 via the raspi’s MAC address. Once I unplugged and re-plugged in the raspberry pi, I have a new IP address assigned because the MAC address changed! How this even happened I do not understand…

So I figured it was time to set a static IP on the raspi itself anyway, and tried the following added to /boot/piaware-config.txt



wired-network yes
wired-type static
wired-address 192.168.1.121
wired-netmask 255.255.255.0
wired-broadcast 192.168.2.255
wired-gateway 192.168.2.254
force-macaddress B8:27:EB:D6:62:69


I figured this would restore the proper IP and MAC address and all would be normal. After a reboot the ip address as it should be, but the MAC address remains different and is therefore not recognized as my original ADSB feeder.
I later added



allow-dhcp-duid no


but this seems to have no effect. Did my sudden power failure corrupt something? What else can I do to get my feeder recognized properly again, or did something happen and I need to reinstall the Piaware .img (gosh I hope not)…

if it helps, here’s the output of my ifconfig:


 eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr fe:08:92:ad:23:4d
          inet addr:192.168.1.121  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::fc08:92ff:fead:234d/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1100 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:837 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:145149 (141.7 KiB)  TX bytes:438618 (428.3 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:2109 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2109 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1
          RX bytes:243348 (237.6 KiB)  TX bytes:243348 (237.6 KiB)


I often format my microSD card, and write latest Piaware image. It is very easy, effortless, and takes less than half an hour in total.

If you have other software also installed on Pi, then yes a fresh install may be hard/nightmare.

Did you apt-get upgrade a 3.3.0 image? See ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/do-not-apt-get-upgrade-on-piaware-sdcard-3-3-0-images-t39151.html
(the short verson is that MAC address assignment breaks if you have an older kernel with newer firmware/bootloader)

Well shucks, that’s probably it. I think I just did it long enough ago I didn’t make the connection- there hadn’t been a reboot for several days at least since the upgrade.

I’ll just put a new image on. If I configure with a static IP and forced MAC address as above, will it be recognized as the same feeder site on my ADSB stats page, or do I just need to treat this like a new feeder?

if you write a new image Piaware 3.5.0, there is no reason why it should not be recognized as original mac address and original site. You will sure get back your original local IP and FA site id.

Just few days ago I wrote a new Piaware 3.5.0 image, and the Pi was recognized by router as original mac address and by Flightaware stats page as original mac address and original site. Nothing changed.

Ok, a new image and it’s back online, thanks guys! I’ve got some work to do reinstalling my prosody server but it shouldn’t take too long. MAC address and local IP are a-ok again.