[trvr]

Ok so at my college my IP address is constantly dropped and I lose internet connection. So far, I have only found three solutions to this problem. Either I just wait it out until the network lets me reconnect, plug into ethernet, or I change my MAC address and sign back into the network. Sometimes this can be rather tedious as I try to finish my work or surf the internet in my free time. So, I know there are ways to program scripts for Mac OS X that could possibly automate the process or at least minimize the tasks. Unfortunately, I am not skilled in bash coding or whatever language you need to write such a script. Can anyone help me with this issue or at least point me in the right direction? Thanks for your time!

[no2pencil]

A few things you should know about MAC :

1.) You will need root level permissions to make any changes
2.) The changes only exist after they are made, defaults are loaded at boot time & there is no way to make a permanent change
3.) Since MacOSX is Unix, you should be able to do anything Linux can do, with even much of the same syntax

I would suggest giving this a go, & see where it gets you.

[trvr]

Thanks for the link, but I already know how to change the MAC address. I am looking for something more along the lines of being able to use a script to change it rather than by hand in the terminal every time.

[no2pencil]

Take what you do everytime at the command line, put those lines of code into a file, chmod +777 the file, put the file anywhere you like, & call that file from /etc/rc.d/local, as this is the last file that runs with root privileges at startup.

I can't say for 100% if osx uses the rc.d directory structure, but FreeBSD does.

[trvr]

Ok so I did a little research and came up with the following script, but I cannot figure out how to build an if statement to test if the MAC address actually did change because for whatever reason it does not always work and I have to re-run the script from the beginning. Any suggestions would be great!

#!/bin/bash

# Disconnects client from network.
echo "Deauthenticating network..."
sudo airport -z

# Displays current MAC address
echo "Current MAC address:"
ifconfig en1 | grep ether

# Obtain desired MAC address
echo -n "Enter desired MAC address: "
read MAC

# Obtain desired interface
echo -n "Enter desired interface: "
read interface

# Change MAC address
sudo ifconfig $interface ether $MAC

# Display new MAC address
echo "New MAC address:"
ifconfig en1 | grep ether