How to restore MAC address in Linux?

I have changed my MAC address in my Linux machine using ifconfig. Now the problem is I have not saved my original MAC address. I want to restore it without rebooting.

Is there a way to do it?

Solution 1:

You can get your vendor-specified hardware MAC address using ethtool:

ethtool -P eth0

To reset the MAC address to this value, you can do something like:

sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether $(ethtool -P eth0 | awk '{print $3}')

Solution 2:

Assuming eth1:

grep "eth1" /var/log/*log | egrep "([0-9a-fA-F]{2}:){5}"

could find something in the logs {daemon,kern,syslog}.log on my system.

Solution 3:

[rooted] assuming wlan0

...(to find driver)
airmon-ng | awk '/wlan0/ {print $4}' ...or

airmon-ng | awk '/wlan0/ {print $3}' ...or just

airmon-ng ..and look under 'driver'

...(to restart driver)
ifconfig wlan0 down

modprobe -r rt2800usb <=Replace (rt2800usb) with your driver

modprobe rt2800usb <=Replace (rt2800usb) with your driver

ifconfig wlan0 up

This is how I do it. I made a script for this and use it with a couple of my programs. If that's the route you take, put a 'time.sleep(3)' {or whatever sleep command} before bringing the interface back up.