In message 6.1.1.1.0.20040826093807.01de9258@wheresmymailserver.com you wrote:
Since this will eventually sold at Digikey & Farnell, it will be used by a variety of people at different skill levels (from pros to beginners), I want to ensure that if someone erases the entire Flash, it will still have a valid MAC address. Therefore, it will ship to people with valid MAC addresses (purchased from the IEEE) in the EEPROM connected to the SMC91111, and no environment variable (ethaddr) set.
OK. This is fine.
If someone wants to change the MAC address, they add the environment variable (ethaddr), and this will be used. (but it will print warning messages that the MACs do not match).
OK again. All this is exactly what the README says.
I have had a few beta users who had to change the MAC address, (to get DHCP working on their networks), but then started calling for help when they get
Why do you need to change a MAC address to get DHCP working??? I never heard such a thing before - of course I assume that you are distributing your boxes with valid MAC addresses only!?
The "solution" was add some functionality somewhere, to change the MAC address in the SROM. I thought U-boot might be the best bet - because that is where MAC addresses should be managed - in the boot loader. I know that this should be programmed during manufacturing (and it is), but there is no way to re-program the SROM MAC. (unless I am missing something?)
Such functionality has been added before, but not as (statically linked) part of U-Boot. Please see examples/82559_eeprom.c and examples/eepro100_eeprom.c for examples.
Today on my board, I have 4 Meg of Flash - If I define things as 4Meg + 6 bytes, in the board/specific/flash.c in write_buff() - I can trap these +6 bytes, and actually program the MAC in the SROM. This is bad form because I know I should not be accessing a device outside the /driver/smc9111.c file.
I will not allow such dirty hacks in the public U-Boot source tree.
The other option I had was make a similar patch to what Ladis did (thanks by the way) - but I expected Wolfgang to have a similar reaction to what he did.
:-)
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk