How to disable random mac address on iwlwifi in Qubes 4.1

yerill · October 28, 2022, 7:26pm

Since mac address randomization is now the default in 4.1 for the wifi interface is there a setting to disable randomization if needed?

Thanks,

enmus · October 28, 2022, 8:13pm

What is preventing you to edit your connection and disable/set-whatever-you’d-like it there?
I have adjusted topic’s title for it’s better visibility, but feel free to put it back or anything else.

yerill · October 28, 2022, 9:16pm

I’ve not seen any setting in NetworkManager for changing the mac randomization setting. That’s why I’m asking.

In 4.0 you could see that the mac in sys-net matched the manufacturers mac, as seen with ethtool -P.

Example:
root@sys-net ~]# ethtool -P wls6
Permanent address: 11:22:33:44:55:66

Now you can see with ifconfig that a new mac is generated each time sys-net is started.
ifconfig wls6 | grep ether

A nice feature in most cases, unless you have a particular reason to keep you mac address stable.

enmus · October 28, 2022, 10:22pm

Does this help?

github.com

Qubes-Community/Contents/blob/master/docs/privacy/anonymizing-your-mac-address.md


Anonymizing your MAC Address
============================

Although it is not the only metadata broadcast by network hardware, changing the default [MAC Address](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address) of your hardware could be [an important step in protecting privacy](https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/MAC_address/#index1h1).

Qubes OS 4.1 and higher already anonymize all Wifi MAC addresses [by default](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-core-agent-linux/blob/master/network/nm-31-randomize-mac.conf) - they change during every Wifi session.
So there is **no need** to apply any of the below instructions if you're only interested in Wifi connections. Users requiring Ethernet MAC address anonymization may want to read on.

## Randomize a single connection

Right click on the Network Manager icon of your NetVM in the tray and click 'Edit Connections..'.

Select the connection to randomize and click Edit.

Select the Cloned MAC Address drop down and set to Random or Stable.
Stable will generate a random address that persists until reboot, while Random will generate an address each time a link goes up.
![Edit Connection](/attachment/wiki/RandomizeMAC/networkmanager-mac-random.png)

Save the change and reconnect the connection (click on Network Manager tray icon and click disconnect under the connection, it should automatically reconnect).

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enmus · October 29, 2022, 12:30am

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

at the end of file /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and restart NetworkManager with the command:

$ sudo service NetworkManager restart

yerill · November 4, 2022, 6:15pm

Thank you. I did add that to the template, restarted NetworkManager, and verified that the [device] section was added to sys-net.

However the mac is still random, changing every time sys-net is restarted. With trace enabled in NetworkManager.conf it shows "set-hw-address: setting mac address to " but no mention of wifi.scan-rand-mac-address.

enmus · November 5, 2022, 8:49am

Well, I’m not sure to which template you did this, but the only other idea I have is to set up your wifi connection in sys-net by choosing "Preserve" for the Cloned MAC address, then while sys-net is still up, to copy it’s NM-system-connections folder containing corespondent wifi .nmconnection to the /rw/config folder of a sys-net’s dvm-template, to shut them down both and restart sys-net.

yerill · November 7, 2022, 7:35pm

Thanks. Setting to “Preserve” worked.

enmus · November 7, 2022, 7:38pm

Great. Please mark the post as a solution so it could help other users too.