This has been a problem for me for ages. When using bridging, the driver
is switched into promiscuous mode before the link init is complete. The
init complete routine then resets the promisc bit on the card so the kernel
still thinks the card is in promiscuous mode but the card isn't. doh.
I think this bug only shows up in bridging when the bridge is started at
boot time (or something else that sets promisc at the same time the card
was started). If promisc is enabled later it works.
Here's a trivial (and hopefully correct) patch that works for me. It
just calls the promisc/multicast setup routine after init.
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>