On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:56:55 +0100
Johannes Berg [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, 2013-10-28 at 09:46 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:

quoted

If the device doesn't actually *have* a permanent MAC address, then it
shouldn't be returning one via ethtool, and should return an error for
ETHTOOL_GPERMADDR.

There's currently no provision for that, but I agree it would be better
to do so.

johannes

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The current netdevice API handle the case of a device without a permanent
MAC address, slightly differently.

If device does not have a permanent address,
then:
  1. dev->addr_assign_type should not be NET_ADDR_PERM
  2. when device is registered dev->perm_addr will not be set
     and retain all zeros value
  4. when ethtool gets address it will return all zeros which
     is not a valid address.

This case doesn't seem to be handled threo mac80211 API's