Leveraging and extending smbios-mdr

["Garrett, Mike (HPE Server Firmware)" <mike.garrett@hpe.com>]

Hello Artem and all,

We are integrating smbios-mdr into our build.  Our SMBIOS info is downloaded and built as a file in the filesystem using proprietary means (our CHIF - channel interface).  Our hope is that we can simply point the smbios-mdr service at it and light up new information about the platform in dbus, Redfish, and the GUI.

However, I can't find much in the way of documentation about smbios-mdr.  I'm especially interested in how to extend the functionality past just CPUs and DIMMs into things like OEM records supplied by the BIOS.  Seems like the possibilities are:

1. Smbios-mdr has a generic dbus API and we write an independent service to query it for this info and publish to dbus
2. We create a generic extension mechanism for smbios-mdr for vendors to add OEM support and push to dbus directly from smbios-mdr (like w/ CPUs/DIMMs)
3. We fork smbios-mdr and extend it (not preferred).

I'd like to hear how best to leverage this recipe.

Thanks,

Mike