From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Arjan van de Ven Subject: Re: [PATCH] pch_gbe: Use a randomly generated MAC instead of failing probe Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:35:09 -0800 Message-ID: <4F1451BD.9030904@linux.intel.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Darren Hart , Alan Cox , Tomoya MORINAGA , Alan Cox , David Miller , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jeffrey.t.kirsher@intel.com, paul.gortmaker@windriver.com, jdmason@kudzu.us, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: David Laight Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On 1/16/2012 8:20 AM, David Laight wrote: > >> the tricky thing with embedded hw like this is that all devices might >> end up with the same, read-only filesystem, so storing the >> mac on the FS >> and then loading it from there into the HW is... suboptimal. >> >> Would be very nice if busybox had a command that would check the mac >> from each IF, and created the random mac from userspace >> automatically... > > Since multiple interfaces on a single system are unlikely > to be connected to the same LAN segment, it doesn't really > matter if they use same MAC address. I think you missed the point. All embedded devices have the same fs, so if you have 2 boxes of the same model/brand on the same network, they'd have the same MAC. That's generally frowned upon by network administrators ;-)