CentOS5.5 and change of Mac address

[thewinelake]

I've got a CentOS install that I've exported.
When I import and change the mac address (with VBoxManage modifyvm), I get a whinge that the Mac address has changed and no network.
Any ideas to get around this problem?

[Sasquatch]

Remove /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and reboot. See if that works. The file might have a different name and location, I know this is taken from Debian based distro's, and CentOS is Red Hat based. Their structure in /etc are slightly different.

[thewinelake]

Yes, I've discovered that for Ubuntu, thanks, and it's great, but CentOS is very very different in this area.
I was slightly hoping that a CentOS guru might be about. Perhaps I should ask in a CentOS forum?

[fixedwheel]

edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to reflect the actual MAC address, then restart networking: /etc/init.d/network restart

[thewinelake]

Yeah, that's what we thought would work, but it didn't!

[fixedwheel]

sorry, i'm not a RHEL guru...

do you have the default gnome desktop installed?
there is: system -> administration -> network
first tab (devices) hit the edit button above the tabs
in the new window: go to tab "hardware device", there is a button to fetch the actual MAC, ok, and back in the first window: file -> save

thats what i do with my RHEL and CentOS

[thewinelake]

Ah. Well, for a start we're trying to automate the process.
Secondly we're really after a guiless build.
But thanks anyway

[Sasquatch]

What we have at work, is something that I created myself. It's a script that we run after we've cloned a VM. Since the MAC address changes when you clone a VM (or create a new one), the network settings will be invalid when it boots. To avoid this, we start the VM on the console, log on, run the script with the IP address as parameter and it generates a new network config.
What is in the script is all the lines that would normally go into the network script and inputs the interface MAC address and IP address as variables. The MAC address is taken from parsing 'ifconfig eth0' so only the MAC address is left, the IP address it the variable taken from the parameter given to the script ($1 in this case, as it's the first parameter).
You can do the same. The script is very easy, you just need to know how to script in bash, use echo and how to parse command output with grep and cut.