[libvirt] [PATCH] 0/4 Add SMBIOS settings to domain definition

[Daniel Veillard]

 The SMBIOS data are a standardized set of data structures available
in the BIOS area of PCs. Those blocks of data describe things like
BIOS version informations, machine vendor, model and identifiers,
as well as various parts of the machine capability. On a linux
machine running dmidecode allows to dump those informations.

  Spec available at the DMTF: http://dmtf.org/standards/smbios

  From a virtualization POV, it's mostly the first block describing
the BIOS named "type 0" and the second block describing the machine
named "type 1" which are of interest. Those data are usually accessed
either from the OS or from management application, and being able to
override the default setings may be needed for such management.

  The suggested XML description follows the logical structure of the
data, one top smbios description, with one or more blocks, each
containing the entries, the example below gives an idea:

  <smbios>
    <table type="0">
      <entry name="Vendor">QEmu/KVM</entry>
      <entry name="Version">0.13</entry>
    </table>
    <table type="1">
      <entry name="Manufacturer">Fedora</entry>
      <entry name="Product">Virt-Manager</entry>
      <entry name="Version">0.8.2-3.fc14</entry>
      <entry name="UUID">c7a5fdbdedaf9455926ad65c16db1809</entry>
    </table>
  </smbios>

  The patch serie includes:
   - the change to the doamin schemas
   - the code to parse this in config structure
   - the QEmu driver part
   - a test example

Currently missing is the conf code to save the data back, and
documentation for the domain extension. I think it's possible
set some of those settings in Xen too, but I don't know if I will
take the time of a driver for it. For ESX it seems there is an option
to inherit some of the SMBIOS data from the host on the guest but
I'm not sure some of the fields can be manipulated directly. I don't
know what  VirtualBox can set there either,

Daniel

-- 
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