From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:52419) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WLc0D-0007Pm-AI for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:22:43 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WLc03-0005u5-DK for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:22:37 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:39236) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WLc03-0005tW-6Q for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:22:27 -0500 Message-ID: <5318AAA0.1090301@redhat.com> Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 18:04:32 +0100 From: Laszlo Ersek MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20140304192005.GS17184@ERROL.INI.CMU.EDU> <1394017184.17561.47.camel@nilsson.home.kraxel.org> <20140305144852.GT17184@ERROL.INI.CMU.EDU> <1394096612.13860.23.camel@nilsson.home.kraxel.org> <20140306160913.GU17184@ERROL.INI.CMU.EDU> In-Reply-To: <20140306160913.GU17184@ERROL.INI.CMU.EDU> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 2/2 (RFC)] QEMU: SMBIOS: Build full smbios tables List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: "Gabriel L. Somlo" Cc: agraf@suse.de, kevin@koconnor.net, seabios@seabios.org, Gerd Hoffmann , qemu-devel@nongnu.org On 03/06/14 17:09, Gabriel L. Somlo wrote: > On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 10:03:32AM +0100, Gerd Hoffmann wrote: >> >> You don't need to worry about live migration, but the smbios stuff >> clearly goes into the guest-visible change category. >> >> smbios_type1_defaults is one of the compatibility controls. It is false >> for 1.7 (+older) machine types and true otherwise. So when mucking with >> it we need to be careful to not break the compatibility stuff. >> >> So, if we manage to get the patches into shape in time for qemu 2.0 your >> way to do that is fine. We are pretty close to the 2.0 freeze though, >> so maybe we should better plan for post-2.0 anyway, especially as you >> plan to add more tables. > > Well, the only other type I'm personally interested in is 17 (memory > device), because SeaBIOS doesn't build its smbios-v2.3 fields, even > though it advertises v2.4 in its entry point data structure. And OS X > is calling us out on that bluff... :) > > > Type 2 (base board) is required during boot by OS X 10.7 and 10.8 > (strangely though, not by 10.6 or 10.9). But if it were only about > Type 2, I'd probably have left it at passing the binary table in via > the command line :) > > > What really convinced me to go for all this additional work was > Laszlo's suggestion that this might help if/when we try to start > trying to use UEFI/tianocore/ovmf instead of SeaBIOS. Let me be a bit more precise... :) Moving SMBIOS generation from SeaBIOS to qemu (similarly to ACPI) would benefit: - SeaBIOS (IIRC Kevin had implied his preference for this), - OVMF (no need to play catch-up field-wise), - other boot firmware. I think I didn't suggest using OVMF *instead of* SeaBIOS. :) In any case, I think if you can pull of this migration of SMBIOS tables, that would be a huge service to the community. I should have reviewed your series but it seemed hard, and I didn't have to "look very far" for other work :), so I postponed it. Then Gerd said "please split it up into smaller patches", which I can only agree with! :) Thanks! Laszlo