xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/ether_gen_addr.9 (revision aa1a8ff2d6dbc51ef058f46f3db5a8bb77967145)
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29.Dd June 1, 2021
30.Dt ETHER_GEN_ADDR 9
31.Os
32.Sh NAME
33.Nm ether_gen_addr
34.Nd "generate an arbitrary MAC address for use"
35.Sh SYNOPSIS
36.In sys/types.h
37.In sys/socket.h
38.In net/if.h
39.In net/if_var.h
40.In net/ethernet.h
41.Ft void
42.Fn ether_gen_addr "struct ifnet *ifp" "struct ether_addr *hwaddr"
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Fn ether_gen_addr
46function generates an arbitrary MAC address for use by an ethernet interface
47that does not have an assigned address.
48.Pp
49By default,
50.Nm
51attempts to generate a stable MAC address using the hostid of the jail that
52the
53.Ar ifp
54is being added to.
55During early boot, the hostid may not be set on machines that haven't yet
56populated
57.Pa /etc/hostid ,
58or on machines that do not use
59.Xr loader 8 .
60.Pp
61.Nm
62can fail to derive a MAC address due to memory allocation failure, or because
63the hostid has not been populated.
64In these cases, a locally-administered unicast MAC address will be randomly
65generated and returned via the
66.Ar hwaddr
67parameter.
68.Pp
69If
70.Nm
71succeeds, then it will return a MAC address in the FreeBSD Foundation OUI,
72.Dq 58:9c:fc ,
73via the
74.Ar hwaddr
75parameter.
76.Sh AUTHORS
77This manual page was written by
78.An Kyle Evans Aq Mt kevans@FreeBSD.org .
79