Bug#536455: linux-source-2.6.30: Unable to set NIC hwaddress

[Nick Hastings <hastings@neutrino.kek.jp>]

Package: linux-source-2.6.30
Version: 2.6.30-1
Severity: normal

After upgrading my kernel from 2.6.29 to 2.6.30 I am unable to set the
MAC address of my Prism 2.5 pci wireless NIC using the orinoco-pci
driver. My interfaces file has a section like:

iface eth1-foo inet dhcp
      wireless_key s:foobar
      wireless_essid barfoo
      wireless_mode managed
      hwaddress ether 00:01:02:03:04:05

Trying to bring up this interface results in the following:

# ifscheme foo
# ifup eth1
SIOCSIFHWADDR: Operation not supported
Failed to bring up eth1-foo

I have experienced this problem with the stock
linux-image-2.6.30-1-486 package kerenel and with custom built images
for the crusoe processor using the same config file as a 2.6.29 kernel
(which has no problem setting the NIC hwaddress). Booting back into a
2.6.29 kernel allows me to set the hardware address, so this problem
seems to really be kernel related and not caused by the userland
networking tools.

I have not yet investigated if this problem specifically relates to
the orinoco driver or if it is a more general issue.

Cheers,

Nick.

PS. The system information appended by reportbug below are for the
system on which the custom kernels were built, *not* the machine in
which the bug was observed.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages linux-source-2.6.30 depends on:
ii  binutils                      2.19.1-1   The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii  bzip2                         1.0.5-2    high-quality block-sorting file co

Versions of packages linux-source-2.6.30 recommends:
ii  gcc                           4:4.3.3-9  The GNU C compiler
ii  libc6-dev [libc-dev]          2.9-14     GNU C Library: Development Librari
ii  make                          3.81-5     The GNU version of the "make" util

Versions of packages linux-source-2.6.30 suggests:
ii  kernel-package            12.014         A utility for building Linux kerne
ii  libncurses5-dev [ncurses- 5.7+20090523-1 developer's libraries and docs for
ii  libqt3-mt-dev             3:3.3.8b-5+b1  Qt development files (Threaded)

-- no debconf information