Re: SMBios configuration table not present until late stage of boot

[Andrew Fish <afish@apple.com>]

> On May 19, 2017, at 3:32 AM, Tomas Pilar (tpilar) <tpilar@solarflare.com> wrote:
> 
> The problem to solve is uniquely and persistently identifying which NICs are grouped together in which host to a third party management system over LAN during preboot in a reasonably secure way.
> 
> If we use a random generated UUID every reboot, we're not persistent. If we store the UUID across reboot, you could take the NIC out and move it to a different host and keep the ID. So the idea was to construct it from either the System UUID or using mobo/cpu serial numbers.
> 

The PXE network boot stack also uses the system UUID so the server can optionally send a custom image back to the system. So your requirement does not seem unreasonable. 

Thanks,

Andrew Fish

> Cheers,
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 18/05/17 19:26, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> On 05/18/17 17:28, Tomas Pilar (tpilar) wrote:
>>> This is what I was afraid of. I am writing an IHV network driver that
>>> lives in optionROM.
>> Out of curiosity, if you can share it, what do you need the sytem UUID
>> in a network driver for?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> Laszlo
>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Tom
>>> 
>>> On 18/05/17 16:25, Jim.Dailey@dell.com wrote:
>>>> It is a tricky problem.
>>>> 
>>>> What I would like is for a new protocol to be defined, which should
>>>> not rely on devices, to contain certain identifying information
>>>> like this that would be useful to device drivers. It could be
>>>> created early in DXE.
>>>> 
>>>> What I fear is some future requirement that SMBIOS be made available
>>>> at some definitive time pre-OS boot.
>>>> 
>>>> You may have to get support from the BIOS vendor. If you are doing a
>>>> driver for a particular system, that might not be too bad of a
>>>> solution; but if you're trying to develop some generic driver, I
>>>> don't have a good suggestion.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Jim
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: edk2-devel [mailto:edk2-devel-bounces@lists.01.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Tomas Pilar (tpilar)
>>>> Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 10:14 AM
>>>> To: Dailey, Jim <Jim_Dailey@Dell.com>
>>>> Cc: edk2-devel@lists.01.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [edk2] SMBios configuration table not present until late
>>>> stage of boot
>>>> 
>>>> This does make sense. Do you have a suggestion how I would go about
>>>> finding/creating a unique identifier for the system during preboot?
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Tom
>>>> 
>>>> On 18/05/17 16:11, Jim.Dailey@dell.com wrote:
>>>>> Not a helpful comment, but I wanted to air my feelings on the topic:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I view SMBIOS as data strictly for OS-level consumption and not for
>>>>> any pre-boot code.  I'm sure I'm in the minority, however.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One of the problems is that the BIOS needs to have scanned all
>>>>> devices/resources and perhaps executed a connect all before the
>>>>> tables can be generated (or at least completed).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Jim
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: edk2-devel [mailto:edk2-devel-bounces@lists.01.org] On Behalf
>>>>> Of Tomas Pilar (tpilar)
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 10:01 AM
>>>>> To: edk2-devel@lists.01.org
>>>>> Subject: [edk2] SMBios configuration table not present until late
>>>>> stage of boot
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am trying to read the system UUID from the System Table (Type 1) in
>>>>> the SMBios set of tables. I am doing this during DriverBinding.Start()
>>>>> part of the UEFI_DRIVER initialisation. Unfortunately the
>>>>> gST->ConfigurationTable only contains 6 tables and SMBios is not one of
>>>>> them.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Once I boot into UEFI shell or start a PXE booting process, the
>>>>> gST->ConfigurationTable now contains 8 tables and SMBios is one of the
>>>>> two new tables. If I however only boot to a HDD, this never seems to
>>>>> happen.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can someone offer some insight why this might be so and how would I go
>>>>> about forcing the platform to provide the SMBios in
>>>>> gST->ConfigurationTable at a sensible point?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Incidentally it seems ExitBootServices is not signaled on this platform
>>>>> if the boot goes through to HDD either, which is another strange
>>>>> thing ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Tom
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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