Kudzu issue

[Peter Arremann]

Hi,

we've a couple of different systems here that all experience the same
problem - Network cards get configured correctly during the install
but when you reboot, the devices get re-detected every time. We've
been able to reproduce the problem with the KT600 integrated VIA-Rhine
and realtek 8139 cards. 

I've looked at the issue quite a bit and the problem seems to be that
the ioctl calls for the hwaddress detection fail if the interface is not
up. You can verify that by booting the system in single user mode, loading
the drivers by hand and then run kudzu. it will try to reconfigure the 
device. Ignore that. Then use ifconfig to up the device (no IP required)
and then rerun kudzu.. it should work this time - at least on the 2 cards
I've tried that fixed the problem.

The code that acutally fails is in kudzu.c getNetInfo (790-810). I've no
problems fixing it and sending in a patch but to do so I'd like to 

A) Know that this really is the issue and if it happens on other cards.
B) The best way of fixing this. I see several options...
  1) Have a list of drivers (the driver is known at that time) that
     can't handle this ioctl call and then just not detect the hwaddress
  2) Have a list of drivers and just bring the interface up if it isnt
  3) Just simply gracefully fail and make an entry in the netdev list that
     is returned by getNetInfo with a special null entry for the hw address
     and then modify the compareDevices code to handle that special value.

Any input/ideas?

Peter.