Re: [Qemu-devel] E820 (Re: [v4 PATCH 00/12] SMBIOS: build full tables in QEMU)

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 11:44:12PM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> Right now, OVMF can accept individual fields, or table-at-a-time blobs,
> via fw_cfg.
> 
> The internal interface (EFI_SMBIOS_PROTOCOL) expects one table at a time
> (for which table-at-a-time blobs are a perfect match).

I wasn't aware of this.  The SMBIOS spec calls for all the sub-tables
to be concatenanted into a single linear area of memory.  Is there
something in EFI or OVMF that is dictating otherwise?  Can you provide
a link so I can further understand?  (I briefly checked through the
UEFI v2.3.1 spec and nothing popped out at me.)

> I think that concatenating table-at-a-time blobs in SeaBIOS is easier
> than parsing & splitting a complete dump into tables in OVMF.

I don't think it's very difficult either way.  It would be nice,
though, if there was just one owner for the smbios.  The current setup
where some data comes from QEMU and some from the firmware, along with
mechanisms for providing defaults and overrides is way too complex in
my opinion.

Thanks,
-Kevin