Blame SOURCES/0002-dmidecode-Document-how-the-UUID-fields-are-interpret.patch

33fd6c
From 72fa3909cfabe8822e2b8709e5d324008f55022a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
33fd6c
From: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>
33fd6c
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 14:11:42 +0100
33fd6c
Subject: [PATCH 02/11] dmidecode: Document how the UUID fields are interpreted
33fd6c
33fd6c
There has always been a lot of confusion about the byte order of UUID
33fd6c
fields. While dmidecode is doing "the right thing", documenting it
33fd6c
can't hurt.
33fd6c
33fd6c
This should address bug #55510:
33fd6c
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?55510
33fd6c
33fd6c
Signed-off-by: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>
33fd6c
---
33fd6c
 man/dmidecode.8 | 14 ++++++++++++++
33fd6c
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)
33fd6c
33fd6c
diff --git a/man/dmidecode.8 b/man/dmidecode.8
33fd6c
index 33f7d33bd5ef..52100a82435e 100644
33fd6c
--- a/man/dmidecode.8
33fd6c
+++ b/man/dmidecode.8
33fd6c
@@ -256,6 +256,20 @@ It is crafted to hard-code the table address at offset 0x20.
33fd6c
 .IP \(bu "\w'\(bu'u+1n"
33fd6c
 The DMI table is located at offset 0x20.
33fd6c
 
33fd6c
+.SH UUID FORMAT
33fd6c
+There is some ambiguity about how to interpret the UUID fields prior to SMBIOS
33fd6c
+specification version 2.6. There was no mention of byte swapping, and RFC 4122
33fd6c
+says that no byte swapping should be applied by default. However, SMBIOS
33fd6c
+specification version 2.6 (and later) explicitly states that the first 3 fields
33fd6c
+of the UUID should be read as little-endian numbers (byte-swapped).
33fd6c
+Furthermore, it implies that the same was already true for older versions of
33fd6c
+the specification, even though it was not mentioned. In practice, many hardware
33fd6c
+vendors were not byte-swapping the UUID. So, in order to preserve
33fd6c
+compatibility, it was decided to interpret the UUID fields according to RFC
33fd6c
+4122 (no byte swapping) when the SMBIOS version is older than 2.6, and to
33fd6c
+interpret the first 3 fields as little-endian (byte-swapped) when the SMBIOS
33fd6c
+version is 2.6 or later. The Linux kernel follows the same logic.
33fd6c
+
33fd6c
 .SH FILES
33fd6c
 .I /dev/mem
33fd6c
 .br
33fd6c
-- 
33fd6c
2.17.1
33fd6c