[PATCH 2/2 v3] smbios: Fallback to the default DT if sysinfo nodes are missing

[Ilias Apalodimas]

Hi Simon,

On Mon, 18 Dec 2023 at 23:07, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Neil,
>
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2023 at 08:37, <neil.armstrong at linaro.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 18/12/2023 16:01, Simon Glass wrote:
> > > Hi Neil,
> > >
> > > On Mon, 18 Dec 2023 at 02:54, <neil.armstrong at linaro.org> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On 17/12/2023 19:41, Tom Rini wrote:
> > >>> On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 11:46:18AM -0700, Simon Glass wrote:
> > >>>> Hi Tom,
> > >>>>
> > >>>> On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 at 06:11, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
> > >>>>>
> > > [..]
> > >
> > >>> And my point with the above is that other SoC maintainers (Neil, for
> > >>> amlogic) have said (paraphrasing) he does not want to do N smbios node
> > >>> patches. Which is why Ilias' patch is if not 1000% correct, it's Good
> > >>> Enough and will, if it's really a problem to have all lower case
> > >>> information displayed, spur people to see providing that information as
> > >>> a real problem that needs to be solved. Or it will be seen as good
> > >>> enough.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> If some platforms requires a more "correct" smbios dataset, then they're
> > >> welcome adding the required smbios node, and it's perfectly understandable,
> > >> but for the other community-maintained platforms we need some valid fallback
> > >> data otherwise they'll be de facto excluded from some tools for no valid reasons.
> > >
> > > Do you know which tools require SMBIOS tables? I found sos and another
> > > Redhat one.
> >
> > SMBIOS data is translated into dmi informations in Linux, and a little
> > lookup in GitHub gives 6.4K files using something from /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/,
> > and by very commonly used tools like lshw and probably fwupd.
>
> lshw also uses devicetree, so should not also need SMBIOS.
>
> fwupd uses UUIDs to indicate the device. So far as I know (and I wrote
> a plugin for it, so at least know something), it does not rely on
> SMBIOS tables.
>

It does use smbios tables. It also relies on them for some info for
capsule updates. Hence the fix in commit ff192304b699

> Here is my main question: is SMBIOS:
>
> 1) just informational, not affecting the operation of the device
> 2) important and needed for the device to function
>
> If it is (1), then I don't mind what is in the tables - we could
> perhaps add a '?' at the start of each string to indicate it is
> provisional?
> If it is (2), then I want to avoid adding information that might be
> wrong / might change over the life of the device
>
> In either case, putting these workarounds behind a Kconfig seems
> reasonable to me. What do you think?
>
> Regards,
> Simon