Re: [PATCH 11/12] platform/x86: dell-wmi-smbios: introduce character device for userspace

From: Andy Shevchenko
Date: Mon Sep 25 2017 - 12:58:18 EST


On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 7:31 PM, Pali RohÃr <pali.rohar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thursday 21 September 2017 08:57:16 Mario Limonciello wrote:
>> This userspace character device will be used to perform SMBIOS calls
>> from any applications sending a properly formatted 4k calling interface
>> buffer.
>>
>> This character device is intended to deprecate the dcdbas kernel module
>> and the interface that it provides to userspace.
>>
>> It's important for the driver to provide a R/W ioctl to ensure that
>> two competing userspace processes don't race to provide or read each
>> others data.

>> +What: /dev/wmi-dell-wmi-smbios
>
> What about just /dev/dell-smbios? IOCTL provided here is just SMBIOS
> related and I think userspace does not have to care if it is via WMI or
> direct SMM mode... Important is that it provides character device for
> SMBIOS API and not how it is implemented.
>
> Anyway, Darren, Andy, do we have some convention for naming platform
> character devices?

For me, looking to this case, seems better to expose a folder like
/dev/smbios/
with actual vendor device nodes inside like
/dev/smbios/dell

Darren?

P.S. Interestingly I wasn't in Cc list for this series at all.

--
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko