[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/7] efi_loader: Expose SMBIOS table

[Alexander Graf]

On 08/09/2016 03:57 PM, Simon Glass wrote:
> Hi Alexander,
>
> On 9 August 2016 at 00:48, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Am 08.08.2016 um 23:44 schrieb Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org>:
>>>
>>> Hi Alexander,
>>>
>>>> On 8 August 2016 at 08:06, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
>>>> We generate a few tables on x86 today that really can be used on ARM just
>>>> the same. One such example is the SMBIOS table, which people use with tools
>>>> like "dmidecode" to identify which hardware they are running on.
>>>>
>>>> We're slowly growing needs to collect serial numbers from various devices
>>>> on ARM and SMBIOS seems the natural choice. So this patch set moves the
>>>> current SMBIOS generation into generic code and adds serial number exposure
>>>> to it.
>>> Shouldn't we use device tree? Why would an ARM device use SMBIOS?
>> Mostly because SBBR dictates it and every ARM server platform out there provides SMBIOS tables ;).
>>
>> Also, both describe very different things. At least I have never seen things like "The chassy of this server has 2 power connectors and is blue" in device tree.
> So there is no DT binding for this information? Does this mean that
> U-Boot on ARM needs to pass information through just 'sitting in RAM
> somewhere' like x86?

I don't think there's a non-EFI way on ARM to pass this through at all, 
correct. That's nothing new though - things like KASLR also depend on EFI.


Alex