#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E)

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Patch merged into coreboot/master:...

coreboot

14 May 2009 14 May '09

5:58 p.m.

#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E) ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: Jan@… | Owner: somebody Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: flashrom | Version: v2 Keywords: | Dependencies: Patchstatus: there is no patch | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ I've tried updating the BIOS of a Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E). The update itself worked fine, but the MAC addresses of the onboard NVidia-Gigabit Ethernet chips were set to bogus values (66:55:44:33:22:11 or something like that) afterwards. Restoring the old flash backup worked. This does not happen with the official update tool from Tyan.

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

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coreboot

14 May 14 May

6:09 p.m.

Comment(by hailfinger):

Some Nvidia chipsets store the MAC address in the mainboard flash ROM instead of a separate chip. Unfortunately, there is no standard specifying where the MAC address ends up, so flashrom does not know how to extract the MAC address, nor how to patch it in.

flashrom does exactly what you ask it to do: Overwrite the old BIOS image with the new image. If the new image contains a garbage MAC address, flashrom will write the new image anyway because it doesn't know about that.

Of course, that might not be what you expected. If you have any docs on where exactly the MAC address is stored in the ROM image, I'm all ears and will probably add support to change the image accordingly.

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:1 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

15 May 15 May

10:02 a.m.

Comment(by Jan@…):

Replying to [comment:1 hailfinger]:

I've opened a support request at Tyan with number 28091, maybe they will comment on this.

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:2 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

5:11 p.m.

* owner: somebody => * component: flashrom => toolchain

Comment:

This is a problem with any BIOS that stores MAC in the FLASH. What is needed is a tool that, given a BIOS image and a mac address sets the MAC address into the FLASH image.

Call it setmac.

The sequence would be something like this:

make a coreboot.rom

mac1=`cat /sys/class/net/eth1/address`

mac0=`cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address`

setmac coreboot.rom mac0 mac1

flashrom -w coreboot.rom

Scripting is easy given a setmac tool. It will differ for each mainboard.

The location of the MAC address will likely interact with cbfs and other coreboot image properties in unforeseen ways.

This is not really a flashrom issue. ron

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:3 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

5:22 p.m.

Comment(by ward):

I've attached an example setmac script to this ticket. It works for mcp55 (tested on m57sli only). Not tested with cbfs images yet.

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:4 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

18 Jan 18 Jan

12:23 a.m.

* component: toolchain => flashrom (please use trac on flashrom.org)

Comment:

Since flashrom knows the board _and_ chipset it's flashing to, maybe it should take care of such issues?

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:5 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

12:24 a.m.

#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E) -----------------------------------------------------------+---------------- Reporter: Jan@… | Owner: hailfinger Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: flashrom (please use trac on flashrom.org) | Keywords: Dependencies: | Patchstatus: there is no patch -----------------------------------------------------------+---------------- Changes (by stepan):

* owner: => hailfinger

-- Ticket URL: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:6 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

13 Apr 13 Apr

1:56 a.m.

Comment(by hailfinger):

I think flashrom is not the right tool to handle this. There are lots of vendor specific flash image locations which have to be kept on update, and building that intelligence into flashrom is IMHO a path that will lead to suffering.

However, adding one or more separate apps to the flashrom svn repository would allow people to extend flashrom with image related features as they see fit. The first such app could be Ward's change-mcp55-mac.pl

-- Ticket URL: https://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:7 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

29 Jun 29 Jun

1:06 a.m.

#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E) -----------------------------------------------------------+---------------- Reporter: Jan@… | Owner: hailfinger Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: flashrom v1.0 Component: flashrom (please use trac on flashrom.org) | Resolution: Keywords: | Dependencies: Patch Status: there is no patch | -----------------------------------------------------------+---------------- Changes (by stepan):

* milestone: => flashrom v1.0

-- Ticket URL: https://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:8 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

1:12 a.m.

#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E) ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Reporter: Jan@… | Owner: ward Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: coreboot | Resolution: Keywords: | Dependencies: Patch Status: there is no patch | ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Changes (by stepan):

* owner: hailfinger => ward * component: flashrom (please use trac on flashrom.org) => coreboot * milestone: flashrom v1.0 =>

Comment:

So, should we check change-mcp55-mac.pl into the coreboot tree so we can close this one?

It's certainly {{{ Acked-by: Stefan Reinauer stepan@coresystems.de }}}

-- Ticket URL: https://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:9 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

12:50 p.m.

Comment (by hailfinger):

We have two related issues here: - Not preserving the current MAC address on BIOS/coreboot updates. Can be fixed with a tool which generates a layout file for flashrom which excludes the region where the MAC address is stored. Such a utility may cause other problems (e.g. incorrect checksum), though. - Setting a MAC address in a coreboot image. This is what Ward's change- mcp55-mac.pl does, and as such I believe it definitely belongs in the coreboot tree.

-- Ticket URL: https://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:10 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

coreboot

24 Mar 24 Mar

8:22 p.m.

#135: Flashrom deletes MAC addresses on Tyan Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E) ----------------------------------+--------------------- Reporter: Jan@… | Owner: ward Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: coreboot | Resolution: Keywords: | Dependencies: Patch Status: there is no patch | ----------------------------------+---------------------

Comment (by alex@…):

I had the same problem with a Supermicro H8DM8-2 and a ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3

Any hint on how to permanently flash a new MAC address on these systems would be very, very welcome

-- Ticket URL: https://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/135#comment:11 coreboot http://www.coreboot.org/

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