[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#825249: network-manager: NM can not specify a MAC address for a bridge interface

[J Mo]

Package: network-manager
Version: 1.2.2-1
Severity: normal

It is, apparently, not possible to specify the layer 2 MAC address which a virtual bridge interface will use. It appears to randomly re-use a MAC address of one of it's bridged ports (slaves).

I don't think wishlist is an appropriate severity for this bug. This is fundamentally broken with how layer 2 bridging should work. The bridge address should not change based upon the availability (up/down status) of a single port. If a switch from any vendor (Netgear, Cisco, Juniper) did this, it would be broken.

It would probably be best for a semi-random address to be generated, stored in configuration, and applied to the interface.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.5.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages network-manager depends on:
ii  adduser                3.114
ii  dbus                   1.10.8-1
ii  init-system-helpers    1.33
ii  isc-dhcp-client        4.3.4-1
ii  libaudit1              1:2.5.2-1
ii  libbluetooth3          5.36-1+b1
ii  libc6                  2.22-7
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.48.1-1
ii  libgnutls30            3.4.11-4
ii  libgudev-1.0-0         230-3
ii  libmm-glib0            1.4.14-1
ii  libndp0                1.6-1
ii  libnewt0.52            0.52.18-3
ii  libnl-3-200            3.2.27-1
ii  libnm0                 1.2.2-1
ii  libpam-systemd         229-6
ii  libpolkit-agent-1-0    0.105-15
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0  0.105-15
ii  libreadline6           6.3-8+b4
ii  libselinux1            2.5-3
ii  libsoup2.4-1           2.54.1-1
ii  libsystemd0            229-6
ii  libteamdctl0           1.24-1
ii  libuuid1               2.28-5
ii  lsb-base               9.20160110
ii  policykit-1            0.105-15
ii  udev                   229-6
ii  wpasupplicant          2.3-2.3

Versions of packages network-manager recommends:
ii  crda            3.13-1+b1
ii  dnsmasq-base    2.75-1
ii  iptables        1.6.0-2
ii  iputils-arping  3:20150815-2
ii  modemmanager    1.4.14-1
ii  ppp             2.4.7-1+2

Versions of packages network-manager suggests:
pn  libteam-utils  <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information