content-class: urn:content-classes:message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Subject: ioctl() to get MAC address from EEPROM
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 12:06:02 -0500
Message-ID: <06226F23984D7A49A694576CF06603F908BBCC@ausx2kmpc106.aus.amer.dell.com>
Thread-Topic: ioctl() to get MAC address from EEPROM
Thread-Index: AcSR2EpqqtgahXMFRfmmyUt8DI/YOw==
From: <Rezwanul_Kabir@Dell.com>
To: <netdev@oss.sgi.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com
Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com
Precedence: bulk


Hi

    There seems to be no standard way to retrieve the MAC address of a NIC stored in the EEPROM ( ETHTOOL_GEEPROM ioctl may be used to do such thing but there's a need for a more direct standard interface).This is sometimes necessary when the MAC address in EEPROM may differ from the one associated with the software interface (i.e. dev_addr in struct net_device).For example, in some modes of channel bonding , the MAC address of the active NIC is duplicated on the rest of the members of the specific bond/team. How to fetch the "permanent" MAC address in this case?
    Any plan to include such commands in ethtool ioctls? Is there  a better way to do this?
    Any suggestions would be appreciated..
    Thanks..
         --rez