Re: [Qemu-devel] E820 (Re: [v4 PATCH 00/12] SMBIOS: build full tables in QEMU)

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 04/03/14 15:32, Gabriel L. Somlo wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 11:42:31AM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:

>> You don't see SMBIOS tables in the guest because you've built upstream
>> OVMF. As I said before, upstream OvmfPkg doesn't include my SMBIOS
>> patches. Both (a) and (b) do however.
> 
> Oh, OK. Basically, I'm interested in looking at the sources
> (specifically, the SMBIOS code :) ) to try and develop my own
> sense of what might be the most agreeable way forward for my
> QEMU smbios patches... That way, I'd actually have a (hopefully
> somewhat intelligent) position of my own to support :) :)
> 
> For that, ideally, I'd like to clone a git repo (and pull once
> every few days to stay on top of things). Looks like the top-level
> upstream one doesn't have your smbios code, so would there be a
> "mid-stream" (for the lack of a better term) git repo you have
> that I can clone and hack against for the smbios stuff ?

https://github.com/lersek/edk2/commits/smbios

(I don't push to this repo normally, so you should continue fetching
from tianocore/edk2.)

I've thrown in two convenience patches for more detailed debug messages.
(See also the debug console hints in the README file.)

> I ask because yesterday was the first time I started really paying
> attention to edk2 and ovmf, and I don't yet have a sense of how fast
> the "state of the universe" would run away from me while my back is
> turned, i.e. how fast a point-in-time snapshot of e.g. Gerd or Paolo's
> RPMs would become stale... Extracting and patching source code from
> RPMs is OK once or twice, but I imagine will be much less fun than
> "git pull" once it gets repetitive :D

Taking the patches from the SRPM and applying them manually would bring
you to the same spot as fetching the patches from the above link (except
the debug patches). Afterwards you should continue fetching form
tianocore/edk2, either merging those commits into your (now new) branch,
or rebasing your (now new) branch.

(In general I don't push my WIP publicly.)

>> One further note (also mentioned in OvmfPkg/README): don't use OVMF.fd
>> with -bios; use it with -pflash (you need a Linux 3.7+ host for this).
>> This will give your guest real runtime variable services -- non-volatile
>> variable data will be written back to the OVMF.fd file.
> 
> Good to know (-bios == read-only, -pflash == writable) :)
> 
> I'm really only in it for testing smbios interactions with qemu though,
> at least at this stage... :)
> 
> Thanks a ton,

No; thank you for doing this.

Laszlo