[PATCH] net: uclass: Save ethernet MAC address when generated

[Michal Simek]

Hi,

On 11/18/21 20:54, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 08:04:22PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>> Dear Tom,
>>
>> In message <20211118162920.GH24579 at bill-the-cat> you wrote:
>>>
>>>> It is perfectly OK for U-Boot to start with a random MAC address,
>>>> use this for a while, and change it so something else later.  This
>>>> is what may happen at production: say the MAC address is stored in
>>>> some EEPROM or fuses, which are initially empty, so U-Boot will use
>>>> a random MAC address, download it's board specific date (serial#,
>>>> MAC address, ...) over network, programm it into the respective
>>>> storage devices, and switch to using the new "official" MAC address.
>>>
>>> Yes.  And up until this patch saying I want to use this random MAC with
>>> Linux required user intervention.
>>
>> Correct - this is a bug in the implementation of thispatch, and
>> apparently the few people that ever used it did not notice it or
>> care enough about it to submit fixes.
>>
>>> And I dare say that half the time or
>>> more that was probably just not noticed (everything comes up with
>>> dynamic host names/dns these days, noticing the IP changed between
>>> U-Boot and Linux is easy to miss in those cases).
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>>>> CONFIG_NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR is the attempt to do the same
>>>> automatically, except that it falls short of setting the "ethaddr"
>>>> environment variable.  I consider this a bug.
>>>
>>> Since the code isn't that old, it shouldn't be hard to pull up the
>>> thread / patch on introducing it.  So, lets:
>>> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/1430769315-27109-1-git-sen=
>>> d-email-joe.hershberger at ni.com/
>>> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/1430769315-27109-2-git-sen=
>>> d-email-joe.hershberger at ni.com/
>>> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/1430769315-27109-3-git-sen=
>>> d-email-joe.hershberger at ni.com/
>>>
>>> And from there we can take away I think two important things:
>>> 1: Not setting ethaddr with NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR is intentional
>>
>> Ummm... From which part of the patches or the comments do you take
>> this conclusion?  Not a single line of code, or comments in the code
> 
> The same part I keep asking to have fixed in a v2, the help text by the
> Kconfig option:
> +	  A new MAC address will be generated on every boot and it will
> +	  not be added to the environment.
> 
> [snip]
>>> So, yes, OK, this is a bug fix, in that NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR was incorrect
>>> at introduction.  That means we do need a v2 of this patch that updates
>>> the Kconfig help text as that currently says it will not update the
>>> environment.
>>
>> This makes no sense to me.  Instead of documenting the bug we should
>> fix it and add the missing eth_env_set_enetaddr().
>>
>> If I prepare such patches, will you accept these?
> 
> Now I'm confused.  Taking the patch this whole thread is attached to, we
> make NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR perform eth_env_set_enetaddr_by_index which is
> missing (well, only in the DM case, the non-DM case isn't updated and I
> guess should also be?).  My problem is that the Kconfig help text for
> NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR still reflects what I pasted from the initial commit
> of it, a sentence saying we don't update the environment.  This change
> does, so the help is wrong and needs fixing.  I have come around to
> agreeing with the concept of this patch, that NET_RANDOM_ETHADDR should
> cause the environment to be updated and in turn fdt_fixup_ethernet()
> will populate this to Linux.
> 

This thread is getting quite long and I think that would be the best if 
you (both) can create patch based on how you see it should work and send 
it over. Based on it it will be super clear how you think things should 
work.
My initial intention was to show mac addresses via net list (Actually I 
was investigating how to probe all ethernet controllers without calling 
networking command for getting IPs out of reset with power domain 
driver) which is solved by Michael's patch when he send v2 version.

Thanks,
Michal