From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751291Ab1GSNZd (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:25:33 -0400 Received: from one.firstfloor.org ([213.235.205.2]:59285 "EHLO one.firstfloor.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751008Ab1GSNZc (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:25:32 -0400 Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:25:31 +0200 From: Andi Kleen To: Prarit Bhargava Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alan Cox , Andi Kleen Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/34] System Firmware Interface Message-ID: <20110719132531.GH8006@one.firstfloor.org> References: <1310994528-26276-1-git-send-email-prarit@redhat.com> <1310994528-26276-2-git-send-email-prarit@redhat.com> <20110719100544.55c7f7fb@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <4E25775A.4050306@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4E25775A.4050306@redhat.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Playing the devils advocate here, but this is really unclear... > There is some additional information I'd like to throw out here as > well. SMBIOS also provides information on the system state after the > BIOS/EFI is finished and before the kernel has been booted. This has > been *invaluable* to me when diagnosing some wonky hardware from OEMs. Hmm this is for SMBIOS tables that changes at runtime? Why exactly is the kernel booting a good point to dump that? Normally the kernel afaik doesn't change SMBIOS as far as I know. There may be some hotplug events that change it, but they have no particular relation to kernel boot. > I want to expand the SMBIOS layer to dump that information out when I What information exactly? And dumping = print to system log? > tl;dr: There are some other useful bits of SMBIOS we could take > advantage of but the current "dmi" layer is difficult to work with. Like what? -Andi -- ak@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.