Re: [PATCH v2] DMI: log system, BIOS, and board information

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Mon Oct 04 2010 - 22:53:16 EST


On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 20:45:29 -0600 Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@xxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 04:19:26PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:49:05 -0600
> > Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@xxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Put basic system information in the dmesg log. There are lots of dmesg
> > > logs on the web, and it would be useful if they contained this information
> > > for debugging platform problems.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@xxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > >
> > > drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c | 35 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
> > > 1 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> > >
> > >
> > > diff --git a/drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c b/drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c
> > > index b3d22d6..d625e53 100644
> > > --- a/drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c
> > > +++ b/drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c
> > > @@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
> > > #include <linux/string.h>
> > > #include <linux/init.h>
> > > #include <linux/module.h>
> > > +#include <linux/ctype.h>
> > > #include <linux/dmi.h>
> > > #include <linux/efi.h>
> > > #include <linux/bootmem.h>
> > > @@ -361,6 +362,36 @@ static void __init dmi_decode(const struct dmi_header *dm, void *dummy)
> > > }
> > > }
> > >
> > > +static const char * __init dmi_printable_system_info(int field)
> > > +{
> > > + const char *info, *p;
> > > +
> > > + info = dmi_get_system_info(field);
> > > + if (!info)
> > > + return NULL;
> > > +
> > > + for (p = info; *p; p++)
> > > + if (!isprint(*p))
> > > + return "<...>";
> > > +
> > > + return info;
> > > +}
> >
> > So if the string contains any non-printable character, we suppress the
> > whole string.
> >
> > Is that the best thing to do? Would it be better to present the
> > oddball character as \xNN or such?
>
> I would definitely prefer to do that, but that would mean allocating
> memory, and this happens so early that it looked like it would be
> more trouble than it's worth. I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced,
> though.

Well, one could print the data one char at a time. If we're running
early in boot with a single CPU up then that wouldn't make too big a
mess.

Is there some upper bound to the length of a DMI string? If so, use a
static initdata buffer dimensioned to 4x that?

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