Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/2] hvmloader: remove timestamp from smbios

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

>>> On 04.02.15 at 09:42, <olaf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 04, Jan Beulich wrote:
> 
>> http://dmtf.org/sites/default/files/standards/documents/DSP0134_2.8.0.pdf 
>> (in particular section 7.1 and table 5)
> 
> "The date string, if supplied, is in either mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy format."
> 
> To me it sounds like an optional thing. An empty string is as
> informative as any other random date. 

Please, again, be considerate of utilities looking for such information
even if the specification calls it optional. As pointed out before, there
are ways to achieve your goal of reproducible builds without dropping
bits of information.

> But before the bikeshedding starts I think its best to turn the
> assignment in the Makefiles from "VAR = VAL" into "VAR ?= VAL". This
> preserves existing practice and gives us the opportunity to pass
> 01/01/1970 as fixed VAL.

I don't think a BIOS date of 1970 will be taken well by various
components. ISTR some Linux versions blacklisting certain
functionality on too old BIOSes. Just grep for DMI_BIOS_DATE in
Linux'es arch/x86/pci/ for examples (there are further uses
elsewhere).

Jan


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