linux-kernel - Re: RFC: WMI Enhancements

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Date:   Thu, 13 Apr 2017 16:51:03 -0700
From:   Darren Hart <dvhart@...radead.org>
To:     Mario.Limonciello@...l.com
Cc:     pali.rohar@...il.com, rjw@...ysocki.net, len.brown@...el.com,
        corentin.chary@...il.com, luto@...nel.org,
        andriy.shevchenko@...ux.intel.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        platform-driver-x86@...r.kernel.org, linux-pm@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: RFC: WMI Enhancements

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 08:38:28PM +0000, Mario.Limonciello@...l.com wrote:
> Earlier question from Andy.  I had some discussion with the right people about this.
> 
> > Is it just the "call SMBIOS" GUID or are there other things?
> 
> Today - it's just the SMBIOS calling GUID.  There are plans (not yet concrete) for
> splitting up data access and organization of that data access classes across multiple 
>  other GUID/method pairs in the future.
> 
> Ideally this could be done without needing kernel patches every time a new GUID
> would (essentially) need to be whitelisted.
> 
> > I am a strong supporter of the following philosophy with respect to supporting
> > innovation:
> > "Enable them to enable themselves and get out of their way"
> > 
> > I've followed this approach over the years to encourage upstream first software
> > development, open-first policy toward specifications and documentation, proper
> > license selection, and development of new mechanisms in existing standards, like
> > ACPI _DSD. All of these serve to support innovation by removing bottlenecks and
> > enabling developers to be independent.
> > 
> > What I don't want to see is the Linux kernel becoming a bottleneck to feature
> > parity with Windows (or to becoming the lead vehicle for new features). When a
> > vendor has a feature they want to expose which they determine to be a value
> > proposition for their product, I don't want the lack of a class driver to get in
> > the way. Exposing specific GUIDs is a minimal and easy to upstream change which
> > would enable rapid feature enabling.
> > 
> > Perhaps I should have led with this :-)
> > 
> 
> So considering future plans, I'd really like if it's possible to expose all the GUID's the
> GUID's the same as Windows does today.

A bit of trouble parsing... to be clear, your preference would be that for the
PNP0C14 on whitelisted platforms (either DMI matches, or possibly via the ACPI
Device UID?) we expose every GUID (Method, Event, and Data) for that device to
userspace?

The concern raised here is that for systems using dell-wmi, the two GUIDs used
by the kernel would also be exposed to userspace. Is this correct?

> 
> As example is we have some diagnostic testing tools.  Having to whitelist interfaces
> for them to operate would be sub-optimal.
> 

Is this a problem because there are a lot of them, or because they routinely
change?

Also, are these something that could be part of a debug feature, or do they need
to be in production so you can work with customers to diagnose running systems
for example?

-- 
Darren Hart
VMware Open Source Technology Center