Messages in this thread | | | From | Mike Waychison <> | Date | Wed, 14 May 2014 08:52:36 -0700 | Subject | Re: Purpose of dmi-sysfs kernel module |
| |
Hi Jean,
On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 2:23 AM, Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de> wrote: > Hi Mike, Bjorn, > > Sorry for joining the party a little late but I am just discovering the > dmi-sysfs kernel module. I have to admit that I am very curious about > why it was needed. What does it let you achieve that you couldn't > already do with dmidecode [1]?
The downside to using dmidecode is that (at least at the time), it involved requiring giving access to /dev/mem to the binary so that it could grub around in raw memory looking for the records. dmi-sysfs provides an alternative that allows for kernel-parsed entries to be exposed to userland without having to expose /dev/mem and raw IO which is insecure.
> I read on LWM [2] that you were mostly interested in type 15 records, > to gain access to the System Event Log information. Well, "dmidecode -t > 15" does exactly that. It may be a bit late now but if anything is > missing from dmidecode, I would rather add it there than implement a > separate solution. > > [1] http://www.nongnu.org/dmidecode/ > [2] http://lwn.net/Articles/429427/ > > Thanks, > -- > Jean Delvare > SUSE L3 Support
| |