Re: [PATCH 1/6] mac80211: allow no mac address until firmware load

[Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>]

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On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 15:44 +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
> On Monday 28 July 2008 15:23:53 Johannes Berg wrote:
> > On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 11:22 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 16:57 +0200, Luis Carlos Cobo wrote:
> > > > Originally by Johannes Berg. This patch adds support for devices that do not
> > > > report their MAC address until the firmware is loaded. While the address is not
> > > > known, a multicast on is used.
> > > 
> > > Johannes, thoughts on this?  Is there a better way to do it for devices
> > > that don't know their MAC address until firmware load?
> > 
> > I actually wrote this patch, but largely I don't care. It seemed that
> > having unique MAC addresses would screw up less with udev, but maybe we
> > can just leave it zeroed until we know?
> 
> Well, I think that really is pretty weird and it is confusing to the
> user to see that pseudo random MAC that changes suddenly when the device is
> initialized. For the human user (so everybody but me), it would be better
> to have the MAC all-zeros until the firmware loaded. So it would be obvious
> that the MAC is not set, yet. I think userspace
> tools should just be fixed, if they have problems with that.

Agreed.

> (What are the udev problems, btw?)

People seem to want persistent device names.  Since the kernel doesn't
provide stable device/bus enumeration, there are udev hacks (see
attached from Fedora 9) that read the MAC address of the card on
hot-plug and then assign it to a cached device name so that every time I
plug in my Netgear MA401 it gets "eth2".

Same thing as putting UUIDs on partitions and in /etc/fstab to make sure
your internal SATA drive is always sda no matter what USB stuff you plug
in.

The question is, when the MAC address gets updated, whether udev will
recognize that change and re-name the device to the cached value.

Dan

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# do not edit this file, it will be overwritten on update

# these rules generate rules for persistent network device naming
#
# variables used to communicate:
#   MATCHADDR             MAC address used for the match
#   MATCHID               bus_id used for the match
#   MATCHDRV              driver name used for the match
#   MATCHIFTYPE           interface type match
#   COMMENT               comment to add to the generated rule
#   INTERFACE_NAME        requested name supplied by external tool
#   INTERFACE_NEW         new interface name returned by rule writer

ACTION!="add", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"
SUBSYSTEM!="net", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"

# ignore the interface if a name has already been set
NAME=="?*", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"

# device name whitelist
KERNEL!="eth*|ath*|wlan*[0-9]|msh*|ra*|sta*|ctc*|lcs*|hsi*", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"

# ignore Xen virtual interfaces
SUBSYSTEMS=="xen", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"

# read MAC address
ENV{MATCHADDR}="$attr{address}"

# match interface type
ENV{MATCHIFTYPE}="$attr{type}"

# do not use "locally administered" MAC address
ENV{MATCHADDR}=="?[2367abef]:*", ENV{MATCHADDR}=""

# do not use empty address
ENV{MATCHADDR}=="00:00:00:00:00:00", ENV{MATCHADDR}=""

# build comment line for generated rule:
SUBSYSTEMS=="pci", ENV{COMMENT}="PCI device $attr{vendor}:$attr{device} ($driver)"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ENV{COMMENT}="USB device 0x$attr{idVendor}:0x$attr{idProduct} ($driver)"
SUBSYSTEMS=="pcmcia", ENV{COMMENT}="PCMCIA device $attr{card_id}:$attr{manf_id} ($driver)"
SUBSYSTEMS=="ieee1394", ENV{COMMENT}="Firewire device $attr{host_id})"

# ibmveth likes to use "locally administered" MAC addresses
DRIVERS=="ibmveth", ENV{MATCHADDR}="$attr{address}", ENV{COMMENT}="ibmveth ($id)"

# S/390 uses id matches only, do not use MAC address match
SUBSYSTEMS=="ccwgroup", ENV{COMMENT}="S/390 $driver device at $id", ENV{MATCHID}="$id", ENV{MATCHDRV}="$driver", ENV{MATCHADDR}=""

# see if we got enough data to create a rule
ENV{MATCHADDR}=="", ENV{MATCHID}=="", ENV{INTERFACE_NAME}=="", GOTO="persistent_net_generator_end"

# default comment
ENV{COMMENT}=="", ENV{COMMENT}="net device ($attr{driver})"

# write rule
DRIVERS=="?*", IMPORT{program}="write_net_rules"

# rename interface if needed
ENV{INTERFACE_NEW}=="?*", NAME="$env{INTERFACE_NEW}"

LABEL="persistent_net_generator_end"