[Bug 1579984] Re: Dell dock MAC Address pass through doesn't work in Ubuntu

[Sebastien Bacher]

thanks Mario, do you also plan to open upstream bugs for the userland
changes required?

** Changed in: network-manager (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Wishlist

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Title:
  Dell dock MAC Address pass through doesn't work in Ubuntu

Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in network-manager package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Dell systems with Type-C ports support a feature called "MAC address" pass through.
  This feature allows systems to set a persistent system MAC address to be used with the TB15, WD15 and Type-C ethernet adapter.

  More information is available here:
  http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN301147/en

  This function works by a system specific MAC address (referred to as
  an auxiliary mac address) being programmed in the factory.  When the
  driver for the type-c ethernet (in dock or dongle) is loaded the MAC
  address is supposed to be overridden with this value.

  To enable this in Linux I see 3 parts of the stack that need to be fixed:
  1) The value of the auxiliary address needs to be exposed to the OS in the kernel.
  2) The "consistent driver naming scheme" needs to rename to the auxiliary name in a udev rule.
  3) Network Mangager needs to not reset to the HW address when this scenario is detected.

  For 1:
  ------
  I've added support for bubbling up this information from the kernel into sysfs in:
  /sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop/auxiliary_mac

  Through this patch:
  https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9047581/

  Here is a sample of what it's output looks like:
  $ cat /sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop/auxiliary_mac
  847BEB5992D2

  When that patch is accepted upstream, it will need to be backported to
  Ubuntu to enable exporting this data.

  For 2:
  ------
  I've got a udev rule and helper script that will do this part.  I'll attach it to this bug.

  For 3:
  ------
  Network manager needs to know to reset the ethernet adapter to the original MAC address but rather to this value (if available).  As it stands today even with the udev rule in place if network manager is running it immediately resets:

  NetworkManager[4513]: <info>  [1462846115.2330] device
  (en847BEB5992D2): reset MAC address to 9C:EB:E8:30:B0:A8

  squashing the udev rule.

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