Can I obtain the MAC address without an ethernet connection?

[pieter]

I am using Red Hat Linux 7 and I purchased an application that requires the MAC address (it does not need an internet connection, however). I only have one Network Interface Card (NIC). While I am on the road, or away from my desk, I do not have an internet connection available. Without a connection, Red Hat 7 is not able to determine the NIC's MAC address.

An ugly solution to this problem is to provide a static IP in order to force Linux to seek the card's MAC address, but when I do this I don't know how I can get Linux to seek the card without rebooting. I was hoping there might be a better way around this problem.

Any thoughts on making this even slightly easier would be great! Perhaps just the ability to offer a static IP and obtain the MAC address without rebooting ... anything. It's an awfully annoying problem.

[jedimaster]

as root
/etc/init.d/network restart
????
I am not sure if that helps but that restarts the network interfaces. Why not just copy the mac address for once?

[pieter]

That does help a lot. I am assuming you restart the network interfaces after you set the static IP. I will try this next time I am in Linux.

PS: The reason I cannot copy the mac address is because it's something the program obtains on its own for the purpose of obtaining a valid license!