[U-Boot-Users] ethact, ethprim and NET_MULTI

[vb]

Ben,

thank you for a quick reply.

It is still very puzzling to me: unless I'm missing something, the
only place where this environment variable is referenced is
net/eth,c:eth_initialize().

So, each time one tries any operation requiring network
communications, the active interface may change for some inappropriate
reason - say one tried pinging with the cable not in the socket, or
the host being pinged down.

What is the rationale behind this moving active interface at any
(quite possibly non intentional) disturbance?

Regards,
/vb

On 3/8/07, Ben Warren <bwarren at qstreams.com> wrote:
>
> --- vb <vb at vsbe.com> wrote:
>
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I am trying to bring up a system with two ethernet
> > interfaces, and
> > don't seem to be able to understand the intended
> > behavior of the
> > multiinterface system.
> >
> > Say when one tries pinging over an interface which
> > is down, u-boot
> > starts browsing over registered ethernet interfaces,
> > making the next
> > one in the list active and so on. So, after the ping
> > attempt the
> > current interface value could change.
> >
> > Is this really what is required - changing the
> > active interface with
> > the user unaware of it?
> >
> This is how it works.  The user is hardly unaware,
> though.
>
> > What are the semantics of the environment variables
> > "ethprim" and
> > "ethact"?.I tried to look through the documentation,
> > and found
> > nothing.
> >
> 'ethprime' lets you specify which interface to try
> first.  'ethact' points to the interface that is
> currently active.  It is modified by the Ethernet
> driver and you should only touch it if you want to
> override for some reason.
>
> regards,
> Ben
>