[U-Boot-Users] Proposal for patch to configure network parameters

[Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com>]

Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> Just use common sense. Anything that is board-specific  should  never
> be  set  in  the  board  config file because that would mean that all
> boards would share this property in the default configuration.

> An absolute no-no is CONFIG_ETH*ADDR.

$ grep CONFIG_ETH.*ADD include/configs/MPC8349ITX.h
#define CONFIG_ETHADDR          00:E0:0C:00:8C:01
#define CONFIG_ETH1ADDR         00:E0:0C:00:8C:02

Oops.

Although, to be honest, this is very handy for me because these are the 
MAC addresses that have been assigned to the MPC8349E-mITX board in our 
lab.  This way, every time I build an image, it's guaranteed to have the 
right MAC addresses.  I don't need to run some kind of script to set up 
my variables.

Is there some easy way for me to specify personalized config options at 
build time?

> Note that you *can* do all these things, if you know exactly what you
> are doing - that's whey the feature is there. But shipping boards  to
> customer  with  all  set  to  the  same  MAC  address is a felony and
> deserves serious punishment (hello Andrea!).

I agree, but if every board has the same flash image, how do we specify 
a different MAC address for each one?

> Ulf was (originally) asking for a customization feature; of course it
> makes sense to customize boards during production, for example to set
> board-specific values for MAC address, serial number, etc.  But  this
> can, and should, be done without creating different U-Boot images.

I don't see how.  Not every company has a manufacturing process that 
allows that.  This is especially true for reference boards, which aren't 
supposed to be used in a public environment anyway.