[LinuxBIOS] SMBIOS tables or alternate.

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 19.12.2007 01:35, Marc Jones wrote:
> Steve Isaacs wrote:
>   
>> Because of a need to be compatible with other systems I'm seeing a
>> requirement to support SMBIOS tables. I did some quick searching and
>> didn't find much regarding this subject on the LinuxBIOS web site or the
>> source code.
>>
>> Specifically, the _SM_ pattern (SMMBIOS spec) needs to be embedded along
>> with DMI blocks such as System Information (0x01), Base Board
>> Information (0x02), System Encloser or Chassis (0x03) at a minimum. The
>> commandline utility dumpSmbios (or similar) would be used to retrieve
>> this information.
>>
>>     
>>> >From an application perspective this is important information. The same
>>>       
>> application needs to run on platforms having different BIOSes -- some
>> commercial, some LinuxBIOS. The hardware type and version information is
>> important for maintaining and deploying the application. Because of
>> this, the application needs a consistent mechanism for retrieving the
>> information I listed above.
>>
>> Any suggestions or alternatives?
>>     
> I don't think that anyone has implemented SMBIOS for LinuxBIOS since it 
> is a "legacy" BIOS feature and not required to boot Linux. Also, 
> LinuxBIOS doesn't leave any code resident which would be required for 
> SMBIOS. Maybe a payload or a custom driver would be the way to go.
>   


AFAICS Steve is talking about SMBIOS, not SMI. SMBIOS is sort of an
asset management helper. With a chassis type, serial number and some
information about the base baord you can use management applications to
determine where a specific machine is used (generate a list of serial
numbers from all machines, look which machine has the wanted serial number).
It should be possible to generate the SMBIOS structure in a similar way
to how we generate e820 tables.


Regards,
Carl-Daniel