Re: [PATCH 1/2] platform/x86: silead_dmi: Add touchscreen info for PoV mobii wintab p800w

From: Hans de Goede
Date: Sat Jun 17 2017 - 06:40:04 EST


Hi,

On 17-06-17 01:38, Darren Hart wrote:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 03:22:45PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
Hi,

On 16-06-17 14:44, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Darren Hart <dvhart@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 08:48:31AM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:

+ /* Point of View mobii wintab p800w */
+ .driver_data = (void *)&pov_mobii_wintab_p800w_data,
+ .matches = {
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BOARD_VENDOR, "AMI Corporation"),
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BOARD_NAME, "Aptio CRB"),
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BIOS_VERSION, "3BAIR1013"),
+ /* Above matches are too generic, add bios-date match */
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BIOS_DATE, "08/22/2014"),

This is the first time I've seen a BIOS date match used to determine hardware
features. DMI matching is a (necessary) hack to begin with (the vendors should
be providing this data via ACPI _DSD anyway) but a date match means we would
need a kernel patch every time one of these tablets gets a BIOS update...

With words like "Aptio CRB" it's clear the vendor isn't doing their job and just
using unmodified reference code. The problem with this of course is that the
vendor is not providing a way to identify this hardware.

Andy, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this... I'm leaning towards not accepting
bios date (or indeed, BIOS version) as a way to identify a platform.

The question is what is the anticipated amount of affected devices
with BIOS date included and otherwise?

I expect there to be collisions (false positive matches) without the
BIOS_DATE check, a quick web-search finds other devices with a
3BAIR1013 bios version. Those don't necessarily also use a Silead
touchscreen (which is needed for a collision to happen), but given
the popularity of Silead touchscreens on cheap devices a collision
is not unlikely.

With the bios-date check added, I expect this match to be unique,
for it to not be unique we would need to be really unlucky.

If Hans believes that there will be no update for some devices,

Yeah I'm pretty sure this specific device will not see any
BIOS updates ever.

while there are devices with the same DMI strings, but different date and
_fixed_ issue, I think we have no other choice for now.
Also can we use some other strings to distinguish group of devices
which are affected?

bios_date: 08/22/2014
bios_vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
bios_version: 3BAIR1013
board_asset_tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
board_name: Aptio CRB
board_serial: T80091A4C11B0848
board_vendor: AMI Corporation
board_version: To be filled by O.E.M.
chassis_asset_tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
chassis_serial: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
chassis_type: 3
chassis_vendor: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
chassis_version: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
product_name: To be filled by O.E.M.
product_serial: To be filled by O.E.M.
product_uuid: 03000200-0400-0500-0006-000700080009
product_version: To be filled by O.E.M.
sys_vendor: To be filled by O.E.M.

The product-uuid is a known example uuid, so is
no good. The board_serial might be useful, but
only if it is unique for the model and not per
tablet. Unfortunately I only have 1 of these
tablets, so I cannot tell.

Do we have any indication that this BIOS Date isn't just the default value
provided by AMI?

In my experience with devices with similar generic DMI strings,
the BIOS date is different for all of them, I believe the
tools use to build the BIOS set this to the actual build date.

Does it offer any more information than the BIOS Version?

Yes it does a web search for "3BAIR1013" finds unrelated matches,
so that alone is not enough, where as the BIOS date tends to be
unique.

I suppose we may be able to do some kind of a partial match on the Board Serial
if even that is platform specific (I suspect it is with the T800 at the
beginning.

The sloppy handling of this firmware really irks me. That's obviously not Hans'
fault, so we'll take the patch.

Thank you.

Regards,

Hans