> Can anyone point me towards material which explains how one might read the
> hardware addresses of any Ethernet cards installed in a Linux x86 system?
Go to another system.
go "ping -c 1 hostname ; arp -a hostname"
Or, just do "ifconfig" and it will tell you all yours.
You can tell the manufacturer from the first bytes; see e.g.
http://daviel.ml.org/OUI/ethernet.txt
http://daviel.ml.org/OUI/ethers.dat
which are compiled from various sources
rgds
Andrew Daviel
http://vancouver-webpages.com/andrew
Deniable unless digitally signed.