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. -- Greetings, Michael. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
