Subject: Re: [PATCH 10/17] bootwrapper: Add dt_set_mac_addresses().

From: Timur Tabi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:03:07 -0500

Segher Boessenkool wrote:

>> If the property exists in the device tree, then it should be used, no? 
>>  Whether or not it exists is not for the driver to decide.
> 
> The property doesn't describe anything about the device;
> it merely tells you something about what the firmware did
> during booting.

Ah, I see your point.  But how else can the bootloader tell the kernel what MAC address to 
use?  You need to make sure that both use the same address.  I don't think the kernel 
command line supports MAC addresses.

> Just everything everywhere that mentions "mac-address" should be
> completely and utterly eradicated :-)

Are you saying that Linux should not acknowledge the existence of the mac-address 
property, even though it's part of the OF spec?

> And sure I understand you have to change one component at a
> time -- seems to me uboot is the first step to fix?

Depends on what you mean by a fix.  Although I understand your point that the MAC address 
doesn't really belong in the device tree, I don't see any better place for it.  So for 
now, I'm going on the assumption that mac-address and local-mac-address are valid 
properties, so it's just a question on *how* they should be supported.  In that context, 
the kernel has been updated already, and some of U-Boot has also.  Well, I'm ignoring some 
of the more obscure IBM systems, because I don't know anything about them.  All that's 
left is 85xx, 86xx, and 5xxx, and then I can clean up the DTS files, and then as far as 
I'm concerned, I'm done.

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux Kernel Developer @ Freescale