[U-Boot-Users] [PATCH 10/10 v2] [ARM] TQMA31: new kernel param. to pass the eth MAC addr to the Linux eth chip driver

[Mark Jonas]

Hi,

> Some Linux drivers like the smc911x driver, as used on TQMA31, rely on the MAC address
> in the appropriate register, but U-Boot resets the controller after every transfer.
> A patch for the Linux driver is necessary to extract the MAC address from the kernel
> boot parameter line and set the MAC address register accordingly.
> This patch adds the kernel parameter "ethaddr" to the U-Boot default environment so that the
> user cannot forget it.

Do you know the nwhwconf patch? We used it with a kernel 2.6.22 for
Renesas SH3. It adds a kernel parameter nwhwconf and one of its
options is to specify a hwaddr which is the MAC address to use. The
Ethernet driver does not have to do anything other than to support the
ethtool interface.

Example:
  nwhwconf=device:eth0,hwaddr:12:34:56:78:90:ab

So I think reading a kernel parameter from the Ethernet driver is not
a good idea - there are more generic approaches available.

There has already been a discussion on this topic on the Celinux-dev
mailing list: http://tree.celinuxforum.org/pipermail/celinux-dev/2007-July/001477.html
. Wolfgang Denk layed out his POV there as well.

Regards,
Mark