Leveraging and extending smbios-mdr

[Andrei Kartashev]

You can retrigger read via dbus, using
xyz.openbmc_project.Smbios.MDR_V2->.AgentSynchronizeData call to
smbios-mdrv2.

See example here:
https://github.com/openbmc/intel-ipmi-oem/blob/master/src/smbiosmdrv2handler.cpp#L1240


On Tue, 2021-08-17 at 21:29 +0000, Garrett, Mike (HPE Server Firmware)
wrote:
> Actually I'm talking about https://github.com/openbmc/smbios-mdr
> 
> It looks like this daemon tries to take in a data file at startup only
> (/var/lib/smbios/smbios/smbios2).  I'm wondering if there's a provision
> in the design to refresh the data file if appears or is updated later. 
> This file (at least in my experience) has to be created by an
> interaction with the BIOS during boot.  So it would be very reasonable
> for the BMC to boot before the host and there to be no file available
> yet.  Also, if something is updated on the host, a reboot may refresh
> this file.  So I think there are a couple of reasons why it would be
> good for this repo to react to data file updates.
> 
> If it doesn't exist and folks think it's a good idea, we can look at
> creating that capability, but I want to make sure it doesn't already
> exist.
> 
> Mike
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Artem Senichev <artemsen at gmail.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2021 2:49 AM
> > To: Garrett, Mike (HPE Server Firmware) <mike.garrett at hpe.com>
> > Cc: OpenBMC Maillist <openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org>; Pedrana, Nick
> > <allan.nic.pedrana at hpe.com>
> > Subject: Re: Leveraging and extending smbios-mdr
> > 
> > On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 03:47:04PM +0000, Garrett, Mike (HPE Server
> > Firmware) wrote:
> > > Hello Artem and all,
> > > 
> > > We are integrating smbios-mdr into our build.  Our SMBIOS info is
> > downloaded and built as a file in the filesystem using proprietary
> > means (our
> > CHIF - channel interface).  Our hope is that we can simply point the
> > smbios-
> > mdr service at it and light up new information about the platform in
> > dbus,
> > Redfish, and the GUI.
> > > 
> > > However, I can't find much in the way of documentation about
> > > smbios-
> > mdr.
> > 
> > If we are talking about the MDR2 project (https://github.com/Intel-
> > BMC/mdrv2),
> > there is no documentation, but I don't think we really need it.
> > It is just a SMBIOS dump parser for some table types (CPU, DIMM).
> > The table format is fully documented in the SMBIOS specification:
> > https://www.dmtf.org/standards/smbios
> > !NpxR!xpRhPV3JWN6U7DS7nROiFT5h3CNwyuFM9FLOZhUK0yNczSR8w5MX7
> > iq1WAqwQuc$
> > 
> > > I'm especially interested in how to extend the functionality past
> > > just CPUs
> > and DIMMs into things like OEM records supplied by the BIOS.
> > 
> > What about phosphor-inventory-manager?
> > 
> > > Seems like the possibilities are:
> > > 
> > > 1. Smbios-mdr has a generic dbus API and we write an independent
> > > service to query it for this info and publish to dbus 2. We create
> > > a
> > > generic extension mechanism for smbios-mdr for vendors to add OEM
> > support and push to dbus directly from smbios-mdr (like w/
> > CPUs/DIMMs) 3.
> > We fork smbios-mdr and extend it (not preferred).
> > > 
> > > I'd like to hear how best to leverage this recipe.
> > 
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Artem Senichev
> > Software Engineer, YADRO.

-- 
Best regards,
Andrei Kartashev