[U-Boot-Users] MAC address question...

[Ladislav Michl <ladis@linux-mips.org>]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 11:58:51PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> I'm not against this feature, I just see no sense  in  adding  a  new
> command.  Either you can script this using existing "i2c" or "eeprom"
> or "mm" commands, or you can use a separate standalone application as
> done for the 82559 and eepro100 cards.

Thanks for hints, it seems this the way to follow.

> This is NEW board, so it has a new board ID - obviously. Sorry, but I
> feel this is a constructed example, and not a real problem.  You  can

Board numbers, customers, locations, etc. are stored in database. That
way it is always known what's going on and the only requirement is to
not allow two same MAC addresses at time. As a customer who doesn't care
about implementation details I would assume that new/repaired device
will behave exactly as before. Of course I'd vote for unique MAC too,
but I'm not the one who decides...

> be  lucky that U-Boot provides the flexibility to do such things, but

Sure, that's why I like open source projects :)

> this is not a free ticket for misuing it. Just assume the  bootloader
> does  not  allow  changing the MAC address. This is actually the case
> with _most_ boot loaders.

Even _most_ firmware has a undocumented way how to change MAC address
(it's note only, your point is certainly right :))

Best regards (and thanks),
	ladis