Why does my MAC address reset after reconnecting?

Question

I use Ubuntu 12. I'm changing my MAC address with ifconfig wlan0 hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx, which works. However when I restart my connection, my computer resets the MAC address to my original MAC address. I'm guessing that this happens because something calls...

ifconfig wlan0 down
... do something before connecting
ifconfig wlan0 up
... connect to designated access point

• I want my MAC address to be the same no matter how many times I disconnect and reconnect, whether to another network or the same one.

• Also it would be nice to turn off the auto-connect feature for my network-manager without having to edit each individual connection.

• Lastly I would like to know how to connect to a WiFi network through the terminal and not via the GUI network manager Ubuntu provides.

Answer 1

I want my mac address to however be the same

Try: right-click on network manager applet, "Edit Connections ...", choose (or create) a connection, "Edit", type a value into "MAC Address" box. These instructions are from 10.04.

Lastly I would like to know how to connect to a wifi network through the terminal

Look at /etc/network/interfaces and the commands ifdown and ifup.