Hi Ed,Pattrick
Thanks for your suggestions,
Any choice with the below two proposals?

1/ 

How about using the Redfish Bios schema for redfish data modeling and Bios-settings
manager as backend to make the things simpler?

https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/bmcweb/+/29670
https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/bios-settings-mgr/+/35563

                                   or

2/

Redfish EthernetSchema at redfish data modelling and phosphor-settings at backend(D-bus object) 
                                     +

Some code which writes the data from settings Dbus object to bios-settings as PLDM is having infra to read from the BIOS-Settings table and send the bios table to Hypervisor.

NOTE: In the later case we don't have way in redfish to show the pending values.we can only show the configured values.

Ratan

Hi Ed/Ratan, 

Just bumping this thread again to see if we can get to a conclusion on
this problem.

Thanks,
Manoj

On Oct 1 2020, at 4:47 pm, Ratan Gupta <ratagupt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:

On 9/30/20 9:26 PM, Ed Tanous wrote:

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 8:05 AM Ratan Gupta
<ratagupt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:

Thanks all for providing the suggestions

Currently Redfish Ethernet interface is not having the concept of
pending and configured values,That means if we use the EthernetInterface
schema, User can only see the configured values, There is no way through
which user can see the pending value, We need to come up with some REST
API to show the pending values.

To solve this problem, Redfish has bios schema whch has the pending
attributes as well as the configured attributes

Did not realize that about the Redfish schema.  Sounds like we need
both then.

https://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/v1/Bios.v1_1_1.json

The Bios schema contains properties related to the BIOS attribute
registry. The attribute registry describes the system-specific BIOS
attributes and actions for changing to BIOS settings. Changes to the
BIOS typically require a system reset before they take effect. It is
likely that a client finds the `@Redfish.Settings` term in this
resource, and if it is found, the client makes requests to change BIOS
settings by modifying the resource identified by the
`@Redfish.Settings` term."

How about using the Redfish Bios schema for front end and Bios-settings
manager as backend to make the things simpler?

I'm not quite following.  Are you saying put the pending settings in
the webserver?

No, I was mentioning that instead of using the EthernetInterface
schema , Can we use theBios schema for the network configuration and
this bios schema is backed up with bios-settings manager D-bus Repo.

https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/bmcweb/+/29670

https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/bios-settings-mgr/+/35563

Ratan

On 9/24/20 9:06 PM, Ed Tanous wrote:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 2:26 PM Patrick Williams
<patrick@stwcx.xyz> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 01:51:33PM -0700, Ed Tanous wrote:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 12:24 PM Patrick Williams
<patrick@stwcx.xyz> wrote:

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 02:39:04PM +0530, Ratan Gupta wrote:

It is unfortunate that org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties doesn't
have a
way to set multiple properties as the analogous operation to 'GetAll'.

It was proposed we (OpenBMC) add one while back.  I think it muddies
the water of what it means to be a method call, and what it means to
be a property, especially for the use case that it was being proposed
to cover.

I'm not sure why it would be considered mudding the water.  All property
Get/Set/GetAll operations really are just a method call under the covers
anyhow to org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.  I do think that
ideally we'd
get the method added directly to that interface because then the DBus
bindings will support it natively.

Mudding the water of when to use a property, versus when to use a
method call (yes, properties are method calls underneath).  If there's
a method call, the dependency between the parameters is documented in
the interface, with a SetProperties method call, it isn't, and you
have to rely on just knowing, or it being implementation defined.  In
those cases, I'd much rather the itnerface make the jump straight
to a
method call, and skip properties entirely.

I forgot the mention this again, but another way to solve it is similar
to xyz.openbmc_project.Inventory.Manager where you take a fully (or
partially) formed object as a method parameter and the process which
hosts Inventory.Manager hosts the object.  Settings could be done the
same way.  The issue is, again, having other processes know when
to use
this new method and when to just update properties.

This tends to be the pattern we use.  My usual take on it when I
see a
new interface is, if the create method exists, use it.

When all of our DBus objects were serial we likely never had
this issue
because the request to read the properties (to send to the hypervisor)
would come behind the signal and subsequent property updates. 
Now that
we're moving towards more ASIO we likely will see this kind of issue
more often.  I don't like it but we could certainly proposal a
'SetMultiple' extension to org.freedesktop or create our own interface.

If you have properties that need to be set in lockstep with one
another to be valid, I suspect that indicates that properties are not
the right tool.  Redfish hits this a lot, where each resource is
expected that any property is modifiable independently, and certain
implementations need an atomic "unit" of update.  bmcweb doesn't want
to have to cache properties that are collectively invalid right now,
but might become valid in the future, so there's an impasse.  Who
keeps the state while it's invalid?  Thus Far, that falls to the
dbus-daemons to store.

Agreed.  This has also been a general statement  we've made in reviews
for new interfaces.  "If you need to update multiple properties, use
a method; if you are just updating a single property, update the property."

+1

We could define an interface to implement something like
Proposal #1,
but we would need a new interface and not a property we tack onto
existing interfaces.  We'd probably need to revisit a lot of our
interface definitions and see which ones typicallly have multi-property
updates and does an intermediate state leave us in a bad situation.

Specifically for BIOS/Hypervisor settings, I mentioned before
that it
isn't clear to me what the proposal is for applying Pending to Current.
Again, this isn't general, but we could define an interface
specific for
BIOS/Hypervisor settings which has a way to indicate 'Pending
transaction is complete' (set by entities like Redfish) and 'Pending
values applied to Current' (set by entities like PLDM).  For the current
settings-style values though, this requires external interfaces to
somehow know that the setting is associated with the Host in
order to do
the application, since BMC-owned properties won't have or need this.

Dumb question: Does anyone actually need to know the "current" value?
Redfish certainly would need to return  the "pending" value in all
cases, as it's required so the restful API emulates ACID-like
compliance to the user.  Could we just have an optional interface that
indicates "values might not be loaded yet" and simplify the dbus
API a
little?

I think this is generally for humans in the case of BIOS settings.
   - "What is the setting my system is currently running with?"
   - "What will happen next time I reboot?"

I wonder if we could make a logging API for humans to use, and keep
the "present" things off dbus.  It seems like it would simplify the
implementation quite a bit. <thinking out loud a little>

I don't know how this is modeled in Redfish.

--
Patrick Williams