In message 110.49487932.2fac135e@aol.com you wrote:
Should U-Boot be able to pass the board's IP address to the kernel?
Yes, of course - as part of the "ip=" boot argument, using the kernel's IP autoconfiguration meachnism.
Immediately after logging in, I cannot ping. ifconfig shows the correct hardware address that was set in U-Boot, but not the IP address, which was similarly set in U-Boot. Also, many of the statistical fields have garbage data in them (see below). If I then set the IP address, ifconfig returns the IP address and the other fields are correct. Then, I can ping.
Unfortunately you don't provide any information about your hardware, kernel configuration(IP autoconfiguration enabled?) and kernel boot arguments ("ip=" passed?). Your kernel may be misconfigured, and/or you may be passing bad or insufficient boot arguments. Also, the garbage data in the ifconfig output suggests that your ethernet driver in Linux is somewhat crappy.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk