Comment 2 for bug 165052

I don't know if it is a problem with xen or with the network interface driver.

The big question is, should the original MAC address to be restored on startup of the machine or not?

Whats happening here is that xen is moving the physical interface eth0 to peth0. The dom0 will use a virtual interface eth0 which get the original MAC address of the network card. peth0 which is the physical card is only in bridging mode and has the virtual MAC address FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. After the restart peth0 has still FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF which is wrong because it will be loaded as eth0 first. Then it starts from the beginning, eth0 with the wrong MAC will be copied to peth0 and the wrong MAC will be transported to the virtual device eth0.

There are two ways how that problem can be solved.

1. with xend stop the script network-bridge should be started with parameter stop, at this point the original mac address we be set to the physical device again.
2. on every startup or load of the module r8169 the mac address has to be set to the interface card.

Perhaps anybody can give more hints to following points:

1. Is there a command to restore the original MAC address of a r8169 interface card?
2. Should the original MAC address not be set back on system startup by the interface itself?