On Monday 27 April 2009 10:44:16 Daniel Mack wrote:
On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 11:14:06PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Tuesday 21 April 2009 07:13:10 Daniel Mack wrote:
On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 11:57:37PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
Not if the MAC is stored in the volatile smc911x registers. Issuing a soft reset flushes these values - if U-Boot does that, the OS has no change getting them.
then either your u-boot or your OS is misconfigured and you need to fix that. as clearly stated in docs/README.enetaddr, the environment is the place where mac addresses live when there is no dedicated storage (like an eeprom).
ignoring that, the mac address doesnt magically get programmed. if no network operation was initiated, then the part wouldnt have been programmed anyways, so you're still left with an OS that cant get itself functional.
Ok, true. Thanks for pointing this out.
usually what i suggest to people are things like:
- pass $(ethaddr) via kernel command line and parse /proc/cmdline
- use the u-boot tools to read the u-boot env directly
- set the hw address with `ifconfig` or similar tool
... which doesn't help much when it's about booting from NFS root.
it works fine if you use an initramfs like everyone suggests -mike