On 19.12.2007 01:35, Marc Jones wrote: > Steve Isaacs wrote: > >> Because of a need to be compatible with other systems I'm seeing a >> requirement to support SMBIOS tables. I did some quick searching and >> didn't find much regarding this subject on the LinuxBIOS web site or the >> source code. >> >> Specifically, the _SM_ pattern (SMMBIOS spec) needs to be embedded along >> with DMI blocks such as System Information (0x01), Base Board >> Information (0x02), System Encloser or Chassis (0x03) at a minimum. The >> commandline utility dumpSmbios (or similar) would be used to retrieve >> this information. >> >> >>> >From an application perspective this is important information. The same >>> >> application needs to run on platforms having different BIOSes -- some >> commercial, some LinuxBIOS. The hardware type and version information is >> important for maintaining and deploying the application. Because of >> this, the application needs a consistent mechanism for retrieving the >> information I listed above. >> >> Any suggestions or alternatives? >> > I don't think that anyone has implemented SMBIOS for LinuxBIOS since it > is a "legacy" BIOS feature and not required to boot Linux. Also, > LinuxBIOS doesn't leave any code resident which would be required for > SMBIOS. Maybe a payload or a custom driver would be the way to go. >
AFAICS Steve is talking about SMBIOS, not SMI. SMBIOS is sort of an asset management helper. With a chassis type, serial number and some information about the base baord you can use management applications to determine where a specific machine is used (generate a list of serial numbers from all machines, look which machine has the wanted serial number). It should be possible to generate the SMBIOS structure in a similar way to how we generate e820 tables. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- linuxbios mailing list linuxbios@linuxbios.org http://www.linuxbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
