From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Don Fry Subject: Ethernet MAC address question Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:02:36 -0700 (PDT) Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <200406142202.i5EM2bh19464@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: To: netdev@oss.sgi.com Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org When and/or why would an ethernet driver not use the MAC address from the PROM associated with the adapter? Since the MAC address can be specified via "ifconfig ethN ether ...." why not use the PROM value, and override it later if needed? I have received several complaints that the pcnet32 adapter is using the 'wrong' MAC address. By looking back through older kernels, the pcnet32 code was changed between November 2001 and February 2002 to read the MAC address from PROM, but to use whatever value was read from some volatile chip registers, which early chip versions do not even initialize. It seems to me the driver should always use the PROM address, assuming it has one. What am I missing? -- Don Fry brazilnut@us.ibm.com