Re: [PATCH 2/3] firmware/dmi: Report DMI Bios release

[Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 11:43:20 +0200, Erwan Velu wrote:
> Some vendors like HPe or Dell, encodes the release version of their BIOS

encodes -> encode

> in the "System BIOS {Major|Minor} Release" fields of Type 0.
> 
> This information is useful to know which release of the bios is actually running.
> It could be used for some quirks, debugging sessions or inventory tasks.
> 
> This patch extract these 2 fields in DMI_BIOS_MAJOR_RELEASE & DMI_BIOS_MINOR_RELEASE.
> 
> A typical output for a Dell system running the 65.27 bios is :
> 
> 	[root@t1700 ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/bios_release_major
> 	65
> 	[root@t1700 ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/bios_release_minor
> 	27
> 	[root@t1700 ~]#

I don't think we want two fields. This adds quite some overhead, and
they are not independent from each other anyway. I'd rather have one
field with the values combined:

	[root@t1700 ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/bios_release
	65.27
	[root@t1700 ~]#

This would also be in line with how it was implemented in dmidecode. Is
there any reason to NOT go that route?

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support