Hello Sascha, On 12.09.23 14:34, Ahmad Fatoum wrote: > On 12.09.23 12:49, Sascha Hauer wrote: >> I think this deserves a cleanup before we merge this. The original >> reason to introduce a postenvironment_initcall() for getting the MAC >> address from nvmem was: >> >>> We do this in a very late initcall, because we don't want to enforce a >>> probe a probe order between nvmem providers and network devices. We >>> can't do it at randomization time, because we need to fixup Ethernet mac >>> addresses, even when barebox itself doesn't ifup the netdev. >> >> I think we should have one centralized function that retrieves the MAC >> address for an ethernet device. That should be called when we actually >> need that MAC address, so once in net_new() and once at of_fixup time. >> >> Right now the behaviour is inconsistent with regard to random MAC >> addresses. Currently we propagate the random MAC address to the Linux >> device tree when we use ethernet in barebox, but we don't propagate it >> when we do not use ethernet in barebox. We should decide what the >> desired behaviour is and do it consistently regardless if we use >> ethernet in barebox or not. This could be cleaned up along the way. > > Randomized MAC addresses are a necessary evil when barebox needs to do > networking and doesn't have a stable address. If we have a stable address, > we shouldn't randomize. > > Fixing up a randomized MAC address is a lesser evil than having different > MAC addresses for barebox and Linux. If we don't need a MAC address in barebox, > we shouldn't generate a random one just to fix it up. > > If we have a stable address, we should tell Linux about it. > > That's the logic of the current code and it's sensible to me. Why change it? We have had two boards trying to add something similar in the last couple of months. I still need your input here on how to proceed. Thanks, Ahmad > > Cheers, > Ahmad > >> >> Sascha >> > -- Pengutronix e.K. | | Steuerwalder Str. 21 | http://www.pengutronix.de/ | 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0 | Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686 | Fax: +49-5121-206917-5555 |
