Using bios-settings-mgr for setting hypervisor network attributes

[Ratan Gupta]

On 9/17/20 9:06 PM, Patrick Williams wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 01:10:06PM +0530, Ratan Gupta wrote:
>> We need to address the below two concerns with the existing settings infra.
> Both of these seem like missing features based on our now greater
> understanding of the problem domain from where we were 3-4 years ago
> when phosphor-settings-manager was originally written, right?  That
> doesn't seem like a good reason to entirely throw out the approach.
>
>>    * Pending v/s configured value: Currently settings have single Dbus
>>      Object, Some properties which is for host firmware we need to have
>>      two placeholders one for Pending values and one for Configured
>>      values. Bios settings have this concept.
>>        o Should we add two Dbus objects in settings infra?
> This was going to be my suggestion, yes.  You could have two sets of the
> objects: current and pending.  'current' objects may not be written by
> dbus-clients.  These are the same terms used by the BIOSConfig proposal.
Thanks Patrick, seems reasonable to have two D-bus objects.
>
> What I am not seeing in BIOSConfig and is equally applicable here is
> _when_ pending is applied to current.  You will need some interface that
> IPMI / PLDM can call to apply those settings?  Or, do you monitor host
> state signals automatically?
>
>>    * Dynamic Dbus objects: Currently settings infrastructure is only for
>>      static objects, Objects which gets added on runtime, settings infra
>>      doesn't support that.
>>        o Eg: IP address on ethernet interface is dynamic in nature, An
>>          ethernet interface can have multiple IP address on it.
>>          considering if SLAAC is enabled(ipV6).
>>        o Seems this problem is common for both(settings v/s bios-settings)
> I assume these would be requested for creation by IPMI / PLDM?  We could
> use a similar model to xyz.openbmc_project.Inventory.Manager where
> objects are requested for creation dynamically through a method.
We don't have this requirement now but in near future it is going to
be there, we can improve the settings infra to support this.
>