[partial backport upstream 760db29bdc97b73ff60b091315ad787b1deb5cf5] Upon invocation, lan78xx_init_mac_address() checks that the mac address present in the RX_ADDRL & RX_ADDRH registers is a valid address, if not, it first tries to read a new address from an external eeprom or the otp area, and in case both read fail (or the address read back is invalid), it randomly generates a new one. Unfortunately, due to the way the above logic is laid out, if both read_eeprom() and read_otp() fail, a new mac address is correctly generated but is never written back to RX_ADDRL & RX_ADDRH, leaving the chip in an incosistent state and with an invalid mac address (e.g. the nic appears to be completely dead, and doesn't receive any packet, etc): lan78xx_init_mac_address() ... if (lan78xx_read_eeprom(addr ...) || lan78xx_read_otp(addr ...)) { if (is_valid_ether_addr(addr) { // nop... } else { random_ether_addr(addr); } // correctly writes back the new address lan78xx_write_reg(RX_ADDRL, addr ...); lan78xx_write_reg(RX_ADDRH, addr ...); } else { // XXX if both eeprom and otp read fail, we land here and skip // XXX the RX_ADDRL & RX_ADDRH update completely random_ether_addr(addr); } This bug went unnoticed because lan78xx_read_otp() was buggy itself and would never fail, up until 4bfc338 "lan78xx: Correctly indicate invalid OTP" fixed it and as a side effect uncovered this bug. 4.18+ is fine, since the bug was implicitly fixed in 760db29 "lan78xx: Read MAC address from DT if present" when the address change logic was reorganized, but it's still present in all stable trees below that: linux-4.4.y, linux-4.9.y, linux-4.14.y, etc up to linux-4.18.y (not included). Signed-off-by: Paolo Pisati <p.pisati@xxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c | 12 +++++------- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c b/drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c index 50e2e10a..114dc55 100644 --- a/drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c +++ b/drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c @@ -1660,13 +1660,6 @@ static void lan78xx_init_mac_address(struct lan78xx_net *dev) netif_dbg(dev, ifup, dev->net, "MAC address set to random addr"); } - - addr_lo = addr[0] | (addr[1] << 8) | - (addr[2] << 16) | (addr[3] << 24); - addr_hi = addr[4] | (addr[5] << 8); - - ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, RX_ADDRL, addr_lo); - ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, RX_ADDRH, addr_hi); } else { /* generate random MAC */ random_ether_addr(addr); @@ -1674,6 +1667,11 @@ static void lan78xx_init_mac_address(struct lan78xx_net *dev) "MAC address set to random addr"); } } + addr_lo = addr[0] | (addr[1] << 8) | (addr[2] << 16) | (addr[3] << 24); + addr_hi = addr[4] | (addr[5] << 8); + + ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, RX_ADDRL, addr_lo); + ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, RX_ADDRH, addr_hi); ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, MAF_LO(0), addr_lo); ret = lan78xx_write_reg(dev, MAF_HI(0), addr_hi | MAF_HI_VALID_); -- 2.7.4