[Freemint-list] [PATCH] set hardware address of network interface

[Markus Fröschle]

Hi,

attached are two patches that add the SIOCSIFHWADDR ioctl to the inet4 
socket interface. This allows setting the MAC address on an interface 
(with drivers that support it). The FireBee/m5484LITE driver always 
supported that, but there was no interface to use it.

This is for hardware that doesn't have a hardcoded MAC and for hardware 
that has multiple interfaces (like the FEC driver on the m5484LITE 
boards that has two interfaces, but only one MAC address). It's also 
useful if you have more than one machine with the same hardware that 
hardcodes the MAC address in the driver. Currently, if you have a 
m5484LITE and a FireBee both using BaS_gcc on the same network, you end 
up with all kinds of problems because of two devices with the same 
hardware address.

The first patch (freemint_if_hwaddr.patch) adds the SIOCSIDHWADDR ioctl, 
the second patch (freemint_ifconfig.patch) enables ifconfig to use it.

In the above example, you would just do an

ifconfig eth0 hwaddr <new hardware address>

on one of the machines from your mint.cnf before you bring the interface 
up and all is well. ifconfig now also prints out the hardware address 
for ethernet interfaces.


Alan, please commit.

Commit messages:

freemint_if_hwaddr.patch: add SIOCSIFHWADDR ioctl for network interfaces

freemint_ifconfig.patch: extend to get and set interface hardware address

Thank you!