Re: [libvirt] [PATCH 0/2] smbios fixes

On 12/03/2010 02:50 AM, Gleb Natapov wrote: Why? It still works, and it's backwards compatible even to older qemu where -smbios wasn't supported. It's actually harder to omit -uuid and use only -smbios, after first guaranteeing that -smbios is supported, than it is blindly use -uuid. And since -uuid may have more implications than just the -smbios table, whereas -smbios should not affect anything except the smbios table, it makes sense to continue to use -uuid for any of those other implications. There's the real question. We use both as of libvirt 0.8.6 because we added the new XML for <sysinfo type='smbios'>...</sysinfo><os><smbios mode='sysinfo'/></os>, where <sysinfo> provides the argument to pass to qemu's -smbios argument. However, I agree with your assessment that -uuid and -smbios type=1,uuid= should never differ, so I've proposed an updated patch series to guarantee that behavior (particularly patch 4/5): https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2010-December/msg00237.html As for whether it is useful to pass the host UUID to the client through smbios, I agree with you that 1. it is still up in the air as to whether that is a decent design, or whether something better should be dreamed up, and 2. it would have to be done through smbios block 11 (OEM strings) and NOT by changing the guest's uuid (whether that uuid was supplied by <uuid>, by <sysinfo>, or identically in both locations, from the libvirt XML). But both of those points are part of the bigger picture, and shouldn't affect whether my patch series is accepted for fixing up current bugs in libvirt smbios handling (although it may imply future libvirt patches to start creating an appropriate binary file for use with -smbios binary=file for passing the host uuid as an oem string). -- Eric Blake eblake(a)redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org