On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 10:00:41AM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:

There still is a bug in the 3c59x driver.  It doesn't include any
code to handle changing the mac address.  It will work if you take
the device down, change address, then bring it up. But you shouldn't
have to do that.

I sent a patch do to this probably a year or two back and it was
rejected (by akpm if I recall) because of the argument that you could
and should take it down, change the MAC and bring it back up.

Is this no longer a requirement?