Re: [PATCH RFC] ssb: Generic SPROM override for devices without SPROM

[Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>]

On 11/20/2009 08:11 AM, Michael Buesch wrote:
> Ok, I think this is getting ugly :)
> The problem with all this is that if you change the harddisk, or change the partitioning,
> the wireless mac address would change. That would surely lead to confusion.
> 
> I think we probably have to drop this patch and instead do a mechanism that
> fetches the sprom from userspace, if the card doesn't have one. This way we
> can have a script in userspace that generates the image based on the PCI ID
> information and just randomizes the MAC address once. The firmware loading
> mechanism would be useful for that.
> In case of an embedded device with the MAC in the nvram, the kernel can still
> override the mac address provided by userspace.

Perhaps we could have fwcutter generate pseudo-SPROM contents for the necessary
revisions and write them to /lib/firmware/b43 with randomized MAC. In fact, one
might only want to randomize the serial number part. That way ethereal would get
the vendor right.

Larry