Re: forcedeth net driver: reverse mac address after pxe boot

H. Peter Anvin
2006-10-04T16:50:26Z

Alex Owen wrote:
>
> This is obviously causes me a problem with automated installs started
> via PXE boot as the installed cannot DHCP as the MAC address is wrong.
>

I have a forcedeth system (ASUS A8N-E) which can't use either the Linux
driver *or* the standard Windows driver *at all* after booting PXE and
then exiting the PXE stack for local boot.

> The obvious fix for this is to try and read the MAC address from the
> canonical location... ie where is the source of the address writen
> into the controlers registers at power on? But do we know where that
> may be?
>
> The other solution would be unconditionally reset the controler to
> it's power on state then use the current logic? can we reset the
> controller via software?
> There does seem to be an nv_mac_reset function... and this does seem
> to be called if the card has a capability DEV_HAS_POWER_CONTROL but it
> is called in nv_open() while the MAC is read in nv_probe().

Doing a proper reset of the hardware would be the right thing, assuming
that this is safe/possible to do.

-hpa