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

[Jens Gehrlein]

Hi Mark,

Mark Jonas schrieb:
> 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

I have 2.6.22, too. Thank you very much for the hint and the weblink. I 
will give the patch a try. A first look showed, that the smc911x driver 
supports ethtool.

Kind regards,
Jens