[realtek] MAC address setting for ether card

[Donald Becker]

On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, Kurt Keville wrote:

> I have been hardwiring my MAC addresses with the rtl8139-diag rewrite from
> http://ilab.usc.edu/beo.

Accckkkk!!!  Don't do that!
(Note that the station address writing code is included with the current
rtl8139-diag.c code, but _don't do that_.)

> It seems to be doing the trick but I don't have
> stickers on my NICs so I am not sure anymore what the original MAC
> addresses were.

If you insist on changing the EEPROM data, change the diag program to
save the original MAC address in an unused section of the EEPROM.  The
only unused blocks are at offsets 0x2D-2F (45-47) and 0x34-0x3E
(52-62).  I suggest changing the diag to check if offset 45-47 is zero,
and if so saving the original 6 byte station address into those three 16
bit words.

> I am going to relook at Michael Heldebrant's attempt to put
> bonding in the /etc/network/interfaces file (the Debian location for
> ifcfg-bond0) so that I don't need to write any more EEPROMs.

It should have always been done that way.  There is a software interface
for this so that you don't have to hack the EEPROM station address.  Bad
Human! Bad Human!

> pre-up ifconfig eth0 hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx up

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993