Re: [ PATCH v2 1/1] dell smbios driver : Consider Alienware a valid OEM String

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On 10/7/20 11:26 PM, Limonciello, Mario wrote:
>> On 10/7/20 9:58 PM, Limonciello, Mario wrote:
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Gerardo Esteban Malazdrewicz <gerardo@malazdrewicz.com.ar>
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2020 14:55
>>>> To: Limonciello, Mario; Pali Rohár; Hans de Goede
>>>> Subject: Re: [ PATCH v2 1/1] dell smbios driver : Consider Alienware a
>> valid
>>>> OEM String
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [EXTERNAL EMAIL]
>>>>
>>>> El mié, 07-10-2020 a las 15:53 +0000, Limonciello, Mario escribió:
>>>>>> Hans, there are more drivers which checks for Dell DMI strings.
>>>>>> Probably
>>>>>> it would be needed to update Alienware on more places, not only in
>>>>>> dell-smbios-base.c driver.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would prefer that each of those be checked on a case by case basis
>>>>> and only
>>>>> added if actually necessary.  Gerardo if you can please check any
>>>>> other drivers
>>>>> that should need this string added to their allow list.
>>>>
>>>> I didn't find other instances of that string in this subsystem, but see
>>>> below.
>>>>
>>>> There is one in pci, another in hotplug.
>>>>
>>>> However, this is an extract from kernel logs:
>>>>
>>>> [  138.093686] dell-smbios A80593CE-A997-11DA-B012-B622A1EF5492: WMI
>>>> SMBIOS userspace interface not supported(0), try upgrading to a newer
>>>> BIOS
>>>
>>> Considering that messaging - does the non-WMI interface actually work?
>>> dell-smbios has two backends available.
>>
>> Yes that is a very good question.
>>
>> Gerardo, I guess you started looking into this because of the:
>>
>> 	pr_err("Unable to run on non-Dell system\n");
>>
>> In dell-smbios-base.c triggering on your system?
> 
> If that's the case, I would ask why this driver even auto-loaded?
> The module load table is very prescriptive.
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/platform/x86/dell-smbios-wmi.c#L277
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/platform/x86/dell-smbios-smm.c#L56
> Was it because it was compiled into the kernel?

I believe that the laptops ACPI tables do define the WMI GUID
that dell-smbios-wmi.c has in its module-id-table otherwise
the "WMI SMBIOS userspace interface not supported(0)" error
would not trigger.

Regards,

Hans