[flashrom] DMI matching patch

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 06:10:51PM +0100, Michael Karcher wrote:
> Am Montag, den 04.01.2010, 15:35 +0100 schrieb Luc Verhaegen:
> > Some extra info on dmi that not everyone is acutely aware of:
> > 
> > This is where the dmi standard came from: 
> > http://www.dmtf.org/standards/dmi/
> > 
> > What you can read there is:
> > 
> > "Due to the rapid advancement of DMTF technologies, such as CIM, the 
> > DMTF defined an "End of Life" process for its Desktop Management 
> > Interface (DMI), which ended March 31, 2005"
> 
> You are right, DMI is outdated. However that doesn't really affect us.
> DMI is a complicated bloated remote API to access lots of system
> information. It has been replaced by even more bloated and high-level
> APIs as CIM.
> 
> A small subset of the info DMI could retrieve is the system information
> provided by the BIOS. This information was provided by the "Desktop
> Management BIOS specification". This specification was renamed to
> "System Management BIOS specification" when it got part of the DMTF to
> show that it is only a piece that is needed to get DMI to work.
> 
> What dmidecode does is just a dump of the SMBIOS database. The name
> dmidecode is for historic reason, smbiosdecode would be more accurate.
> This database is standardized in the SMBIOS specification, which is
> still alive, see
> http://www.dmtf.org/standards/smbios/
> 
> The latest revision is v2.6.1 from April 2009.
> 
> Regards,
>   Michael Karcher
> 

I am not trying to keep dmi out of flashrom any more. Pciids solve 95% 
of our matches, we need to fill in the other 5%. Sadly, dmi, whatever 
its state, is our next best option.

I am just warning that dmi might not be as tight and enduring as many 
people think it is, and that therefor it should be used with some care.

Making a dmi string part of the matching algorithm seems necessary for 
some boards. But it should be pretty much last in precedence, and only 
as an expansion, a further possibility for board matching.

Also, i own Jetway mini-itx boards for which dmi will not change a 
thing (but luckily, they do not require a board enable).

Luc Verhaegen.