On 03/22/2010 03:37 AM, Michael Buesch wrote: > On Monday 22 March 2010 07:28:23 Calvin Walton wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Sat, 2010-03-20 at 19:14 -0500, Larry Finger wrote: >> Some recent BCM43XX devices lack an on-board SPROM. The pertinent data >>> from the SPROM could be included in the kernel; however, this presents >>> a problem in the generation of a unique, reproducible MAC address. The >>> solution has been to create a utility that generates a virtual SPROM >>> image with a random MAC address. This image is stored in the firmware >>> area, and loaded using the asyncronous firmware load facility. >> >> I'm curious, how would this firmware-loading scheme deal with having >> multiple cards of this type installed? This seems like an unusual >> situation, but it looks like this patch will cause all of the cards to >> start up with the same MAC address due to the fixed filename. >> >> Instead of using a firmware file to load in the MAC address, might it be >> possible to move the persistent MAC setting to a simple udev rule which >> generates a persistent MAC address, saves it, then sets it each boot >> using a command like "ip link set wlan0 address XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX" ? >> >> This would remove the need to have this "fake" firmware file available >> at boot, provided that the driver can handle leaving the address >> unconfigured until userspace gets around to setting it. As well, it >> could be written to work with multiple cards easily, saving a different >> MAC for each. >> >> Some thoughts for your consideration, >> > > I think this actually is a very good idea. > This way we could live without a user-supplied sprom image, which I would > _really_ > prefer.
Avoiding the use of a new user-space program would be desirable, but I cannot think of any way that a udev rule could distinguish one card from another. If we had any unique features such as a serial number, then we wouldn't need user space at all. Any suggestions? Larry _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list Bcm43xx-dev@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
