[U-Boot-Users] Proposal for patch to configure network parameters

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <462946CF.1000807 at freescale.com> you wrote:
> 
> Could you post a list of configuration parameters that you'd rather not see in a board 
> header file?  When I created MPC8349ITX.h, I just followed the example of other 83xx 
> boards.  I defined the network CONFIG_ options, because I thought that a flash-default 
> setting would be useful.

At least partially it's a matter of taste. I tend to rather make sure
that a user of the board sees that he must provide  his  own  network
configuration  by providing no default setting, rather then having to
deal with nasty network issues because several boards share the  same
IP or - even worse - MAC addresses.


Just use common sense. Anything that is board-specific  should  never
be  set  in  the  board  config file because that would mean that all
boards would share this property in the default configuration.

An absolute no-no is CONFIG_ETH*ADDR.

Similar, attempts to define a standard setting for "serial#" are
seriously broken.

I also consider it bad design to set CONFIG_IPADDR an CONFIG_HOSTNAME


Note that you *can* do all these things, if you know exactly what you
are doing - that's whey the feature is there. But shipping boards  to
customer  with  all  set  to  the  same  MAC  address is a felony and
deserves serious punishment (hello Andrea!). 


Ulf was (originally) asking for a customization feature; of course it
makes sense to customize boards during production, for example to set
board-specific values for MAC address, serial number, etc.  But  this
can, and should, be done without creating different U-Boot images.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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