via-rhine drops out of the init code if the hardware provides an invalid MAC address. Roger Luethi has had several reports of Rhine NICs doing just that. The hardware still works, though; assigning a random MAC address allows the NIC to be used as usual. Tested as a standalone interface, as carrier for ppp, and as bonding slave. Signed-off-by Alexandru Gagniuc --- drivers/net/via-rhine.c.orig 2011-02-06 21:04:07.000000000 +0200 +++ drivers/net/via-rhine.c 2011-03-02 22:03:13.000000000 +0200 @@ -762,13 +762,16 @@ static int __devinit rhine_init_one(stru for (i = 0; i < 6; i++) dev->dev_addr[i] = ioread8(ioaddr + StationAddr + i); - memcpy(dev->perm_addr, dev->dev_addr, dev->addr_len); - if (!is_valid_ether_addr(dev->perm_addr)) { - rc = -EIO; - printk(KERN_ERR "Invalid MAC address\n"); - goto err_out_unmap; + if (!is_valid_ether_addr(dev->dev_addr)) { + printk(KERN_ERR "via-rhine: Invalid MAC address: %pM. \n", + dev->dev_addr); + /* The device may still be used normally if a valid MAC is configured */ + random_ether_addr(dev->dev_addr); + printk(KERN_ERR "via-rhine: Using randomly generated address: %pM instead. \n", + dev->dev_addr); } + memcpy(dev->perm_addr, dev->dev_addr, dev->addr_len); /* For Rhine-I/II, phy_id is loaded from EEPROM */ if (!phy_id)