RE: [E1000-devel] Supporting platforms with no EEPROM?
Bill Gatliff wrote:
> John Winters wrote:
>> Bill Gatliff wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> The MAC Address will be reset to 00:00:00:00:00:00, which is invalid
>>> and requires you to set the proper MAC address manually before
>>> continuing
>>> to enable this network device.
the Linux kernel actually can make up a mac address for you, there is
even a standard call to do so.
we don't officially support eepromless designs in our normal drivers
(most embedded users expect to modify their drivers). I know that there
is some test patches to allow the eepromless set up in our drivers, that
our TME teams have been working on.
>> [snip]
>>> To date, the only way I've seen around this is to just hack out the
>>> code in the e1000 driver that deals with the EEPROM and MAC
>>> addresses. Is there any plan for cleanly handling no-EEPROM
>>> platforms, or am I into "undiscovered territory" here? I'm willing
>>> to submit patches once I find a minimally-invasive and robust
>>> solution, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel...
we don't want to support this in the default drivers, but maybe we could
in the kernel with a Kconfig option that defaulted to off.
>> Can't you just put a made-up MAC address into
>> /etc/network/interfaces? Like this:
>>
>> allow-hotplug eth0
>> iface eth0 inet dhcp
>> hwaddress ether 00:07:95:09:c4:96
>>
>> Don't use that one (IIRC, it belongs to a Mini-ITX board in my
>> cupboard). Ideally use the original one configured for the unit.
>
> One could, but that won't work for root-over-NFS.
can't the driver parse the cmdline from boot and see if there is a MAC
address supplied? That would definitely be something specific to your
setup since it is handled by redboot.
Jesse
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