In general, a Linux driver shall not make any assumptions about any initialization being done (or not done) by a boot loader; instead, that driver is responsible for performing all of the necessary initialization itself.
IMHO the MAC is an exception to this. Since it's supposed to be hardcoded to the board it's inappropriate for the OS to be dynamically assigning it. Currently we set the MAC from the protected flash of U-Boot into our Coldfire's fec before starting the OS(which is not necessarily Linux). The boards can then be appropriatly shipped to customers with pre-programmed MAC addresses identifying the module, independent of the OS.
I realize this discussion centers around an ARM, however, so there may be hardware weirdness I don't know about that prevents this type of approach.
NZG
On Thursday 08 June 2006 2:49 pm, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Dear Marco,
in message 448864F6.8060106@koansoftware.com you wrote:
BTW if you really want a quick and dirty solution you can use this little patch. http://www.koansoftware.com/it/art.php?art=86
May I please ask you to pay a little more respect to Copyright? This article was stolen^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopied from our DULG without permission, without including a copyright notice and a pointer to the license used, and without any credit to previous authors.
You cannot do that.
Wolfgang Denk