I'm attempting to use a ethernet bridge to solve the following problem: VM Ware's player allows a guest operating system to be bridged in with an existing network interface on the host operating system. My problem is that the connected interface on my host system varies between my wired and wireless ports depending on my location. So, I decided to try creating a bridge (br0) between the two interfaces (eth0 and eth1) and then configuring VM Ware to bridge to br0 instead of either eth0 or eth1. This appears to work as expected with one caveat. When both interfaces are members of the bridge and the wired port is not connected, the bridge can not acquire and IP. However, when the wired port is removed from the bridge it can acquire an IP. Attempting to investigate this, I found that regardless of the order in which the interfaces are added to the bridge, the bridge always winds up with the MAC address of the wired port when both are members of the bridge. If the wired port is removed (or not yet added) the MAC of the bridge is that of the wireless port. So, it appears that as long as the bridge has the same MAC as the wireless it can acquire an IP over the wireless interface. Is there a way to control the MAC address that gets assigned to the bridge interface? Or is there a better way to accomplish my goal of being able to switch between wired and wireless ports while bridging in a VM guest? -- Jamin W. Collins
