From: "Richard Röjfors" <richard.rojfors@pelagicore•com>
To: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare•com>
Cc: netdev@vger•kernel.org, davem@davemloft•net
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ks8842: Add module param for setting mac address
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:35:47 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4BCB7B33.4040306@pelagicore.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1271620221.3679.265.camel@localhost>
On 04/18/2010 09:50 PM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-04-18 at 19:25 +0200, Richard Röjfors wrote:
>> This patch adds a module parameter for setting the MAC address.
>>
>> To ensure this MAC address is used, the MAC address is written
>> after each hardware reset.
> [...]
>
> This is not an accepted way of setting the MAC address.
I agree it's not the cleanest way of doing this, I saw some of the
other drivers do like this.
> The accepted ways to initialise a network controller's address are:
>
> 1. a. Controller reads it from dedicated NVRAM. Driver reads it from
> controller.
> b. Driver reads it from dedicated NVRAM.
Not possible with the current hardware.
> 2. Platform firmware or boot loader passes platform data (OpenFirmware,
> device tree, etc.) to the kernel, which includes the assigned MAC
> address. Driver uses kernel functions to read it from platform data.
On our system (X86 based) the ks8842 is connected via a FPGA, the FPGA is
connected via PCI express. The system has a standard BIOS.
In linux we have a MFD driver chunking up the PCI memory space into
platform devices. In that case we would need to feed the data as a param
to the MFD driver which copies into the platform data of the ks8842, would
be doable.
> 3. Platform firmware or boot loader programs it into the controller.
> Driver reads it from the controller.
We use standard BIOS and boot loaders from the X86 distros -> more or less
not doable.
> 4. Driver generates random address.
That's the current fallback if none is given and the random address
in the chip isn't valid.
>
> In any case, userland can change the MAC address later.
If we don't need to have a known MAC before the root FS is mounted.
--Richard
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-04-18 21:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-04-18 17:25 [PATCH] ks8842: Add module param for setting mac address Richard Röjfors
2010-04-18 19:50 ` Ben Hutchings
2010-04-18 21:35 ` Richard Röjfors [this message]
2010-04-19 4:18 ` David Miller
2010-04-19 6:16 ` Richard Röjfors
2010-04-19 6:36 ` David Miller
2010-04-19 6:46 ` Richard Röjfors
2010-04-19 7:13 ` David Miller
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