D-Bus interfaces for FRU VPD inventory

[Yi TZ Li]

Hi Deepak,

I am reading your patch: https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/#/c/1095/ and
https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/#/c/1094/,
and the DBus interfaces you proposed.

But I might miss some background information, hoping you could help:

Please see my questions bellow:

> From: Deepak Kodihalli <dkodihal at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> To: OpenBMC Maillist <openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org>
> Date: 11/14/2016 02:59 PM
> Subject: D-Bus interfaces for FRU VPD inventory
> Sent by: "openbmc" <openbmc-bounces+shliyi=cn.ibm.com at lists.ozlabs.org>
>
> Hello,
>
> I'd like to solicit feedback on the d-bus interfaces that we're
> defining to represent FRU information, also known as FRU VPD (Vital
> Product Data).
>
> A little background :
>
> - The d-bus interfaces are being written as Inventory interfaces, as
> YAML files, under the openbmc/phosphor-dbus-interfaces repo [1].

What is the relationship between the YAML files in
openbmc/phosphor-dbus-interfaces, and openbmc/phosphor-inventory-manager?
Will phosphor-inventory-manager (PIM) uses the YAML files to generate dbus
objects for FRU/VPD?

> - As far as sources/formats of VPD are concerned, we've looked at
> the IPMI FRU information spec [2], and the open-power VPD format [3].

Will BMC read and parse open-power format VPD? As I understand, Hostboot
parses those VPD and send them to BMC as IPMI FRU format.
Will BMC do the same thing as Hostboot?

> - The goal has been to define properties in the d-bus interfaces to
> describe various pieces of FRU VPD, and to describe them in such a
> way that they're agnostic to the VPD format. It would be up to VPD
> related applications to parse specific VPD formats and then to
> populate the Inventory via the new d-bus interfaces.
> - There are in general two classes of interfaces : those describing
> physical items such as processors, DIMMs, etc.; and those describing
> virtual items such as a replaceable item, a repairable item, an item
> having voltage control enabled, etc.

Could you give an example of the "virtual items"?
Also there are other FRU items like PCIE card, HDD. How to handle them in
the new inventory framework?

Thanks,
-Yi
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