Hi,
I'm using a xenial system with Kernel 4.9.11-sunxi on LIME2 (actually it's an Olimex A20-SOM with external RTL8211 PHY) and trying to prevent the ethernet from coming up on boot.
When turning the system on, the ethernet interface will assign a random MAC address; later on my script sets a proper MAC from an assigned range. Until then the eth0 interface must stay down to prevent the network from being spammed with bogous messages.
This is because the ethernet interface chooses a random MAC address when the system boots up; later on a script sets the proper MAC address from an assigned range (along with IP and route configuration); The link must stay down until this has happened.
I've tried to replace the eth0 entries in /etc/network/interfaces with
auto eth0 inet manual
Which has the effect that the interface no longer gets a DHCP address, but I'm still seeing this in my dmesg log:
[ 15.972814] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 16.990692] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx [ 16.990760] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
