From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Vrabel Subject: Re: [RFC] [PATCH 1/2] Driver to remember ethernet MAC values: maclist Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:16:43 +0000 Message-ID: <43F9B32B.3090203@cantab.net> References: <20060220010113.GA19309@deprecation.cyrius.com> <20060220014735.GD4971@stusta.de> <20060220030146.11f418dc@inspiron> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Adrian Bunk , Martin Michlmayr , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, John Bowler Return-path: To: Alessandro Zummo In-Reply-To: <20060220030146.11f418dc@inspiron> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Alessandro Zummo wrote: > On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:47:35 +0100 > Adrian Bunk wrote: > > >>>Some Ethernet hardware implementations have no built-in storage for >>>allocated MAC values - an example is the Intel IXP420 chip which has >>>support for Ethernet but no defined way of storing allocated MAC values. >>>With such hardware different board level implementations store the >>>allocated MAC (or MACs) in different ways. Rather than put board level >>>code For those not familar with the IXP4xx, the Ethernet drivers are proprietary and given that there are no other proposed users of this maclist code there's no need for it in the kernel at this time. >>Silly question: >> >>Why can't this be implemented in user space using the SIOCSIFHWADDR >>ioctl? I'm with Adrian on this -- it's a job for userspace. The storage of the MAC address isn't something that's necessarily board specific anyway but could depend on which bootloader is used and/or the bootloader version. > Because sometimes you need to have networking available > well before userspace. In the specific case of the IXP4xx, you presumably have some userspace available because you've just loaded the NPE firmware from it, yes? David Vrabel