Rock 5C - MAC address changes on reboot

ROCK 5 Series 5C
1

On the Rock 5C using the Linux 6.1 Debian CLI vendor image (specifically release t8) upon each reboot of the device the Wifi MAC Address changes. This prevents assignment of static IP from DHCP server.

As a work around to set a persistent MAC address do the following.

Get the name of your configured wifi connection

nmcli connection show

Set persistent MAC address for wifi connection.

nmcli connection modify <WIFI NAME> 802-11-wireless.cloned-mac-address XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

Reactivate connection.

nmcli connection up <WIFI NAME>
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2

There’s a script that derives the Mac address from the CPU serial number for the rockpi-s. It meet serve as the basis for the rock 5c.

3

Yeah, on other Images it does this, however on the 6.1 image referenced it must be missing.

4

The script is included only in Rock PI-S and Rock S0 images

5

You need to modify the aic8800 wifi driver to set the mac address.

6

The Wi-Fi/BT module used in ROCK 5C is AIC8800. To set a fixed Wi-Fi MAC address, you need to write the MAC address to the EFUSE of the AIC8800. The EFUSE MAC address can only be written twice.(it may have already been burned once at the factory). Below is the script and the image I used. Additionally, you need to place an extra bin file in the same directory as the script (I executed it in the /home/radxa directory.).
script: flash_mac.sh flash_mac.zip (994 Bytes)
image: https://github.com/radxa-build/rock-5c-6_1/releases/download/rsdk-t3/rock-5c-6_1_bookworm_kde_t3.output.img.xz
bin: lmacfw_rf_8800d80_u02.bin lmacfw_rf_8800d80_u02.zip (155.7 KB)

7

Thank you for these details.

I have cleaned the script up a bit to remove the hardcoded paths and kernel version and put some instructions of the process here https://github.com/swdee/aic8800-flash-mac for any one else who wants to do this.

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