xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/ether_gen_addr.9 (revision 911f0260390e18cf85f3dbf2c719b593efdc1e3c)
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31.Dd June 1, 2021
32.Dt ETHER_GEN_ADDR 9
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm ether_gen_addr
36.Nd "generate an arbitrary MAC address for use"
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.In sys/types.h
39.In sys/socket.h
40.In net/if.h
41.In net/if_var.h
42.In net/ethernet.h
43.Ft void
44.Fn ether_gen_addr "struct ifnet *ifp" "struct ether_addr *hwaddr"
45.Sh DESCRIPTION
46The
47.Fn ether_gen_addr
48function generates an arbitrary MAC address for use by an ethernet interface
49that does not have an assigned address.
50.Pp
51By default,
52.Nm
53attempts to generate a stable MAC address using the hostid of the jail that
54the
55.Ar ifp
56is being added to.
57During early boot, the hostid may not be set on machines that haven't yet
58populated
59.Pa /etc/hostid ,
60or on machines that do not use
61.Xr loader 8 .
62.Pp
63.Nm
64can fail to derive a MAC address due to memory allocation failure, or because
65the hostid has not been populated.
66In these cases, a locally-administered unicast MAC address will be randomly
67generated and returned via the
68.Ar hwaddr
69parameter.
70.Pp
71If
72.Nm
73succeeds, then it will return a MAC address in the FreeBSD Foundation OUI,
74.Dq 58:9c:fc ,
75via the
76.Ar hwaddr
77parameter.
78.Sh AUTHORS
79This manual page was written by
80.An Kyle Evans Aq Mt kevans@FreeBSD.org .
81