Subject: Re: [PATCH 16/16] wl1251: Add sysfs file address for setting permanent mac address

From: Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:33:20 -0700

On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:56:55 +0100
Johannes Berg <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Mon, 2013-10-28 at 09:46 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> 
> > If the device doesn't actually *have* a permanent MAC address, then it
> > shouldn't be returning one via ethtool, and should return an error for
> > ETHTOOL_GPERMADDR.
> 
> There's currently no provision for that, but I agree it would be better
> to do so.
> 
> johannes
> 
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The current netdevice API handle the case of a device without a permanent
MAC address, slightly differently.

If device does not have a permanent address,
then:
  1. dev->addr_assign_type should not be NET_ADDR_PERM
  2. when device is registered dev->perm_addr will not be set
     and retain all zeros value
  4. when ethtool gets address it will return all zeros which
     is not a valid address.

This case doesn't seem to be handled threo mac80211 API's