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SMBIOS Validation Tool

What is it?

SMBIOS Validation Tool is an open source tool that will validate SMBIOS records in vendor's firmware (BIOS) conformance to the SMBIOS requirements to Google Server Firmware Specification.

Note: This is not an officially supported Google product.

Terminology

  • SMBIOS - System Management BIOS. The SMBIOS Specification addresses how motherboard and system vendors present management information about their products in a standard format by extending the BIOS interface on x86 architecture systems. The information is intended to allow generic instrumentation to deliver this information to management applications that use DMI, CIM or direct access, eliminating the need for error prone operations like probing system hardware for presence detection.

  • SMBIOS Record - One specific SMBIOS Structure. Each record has a type, a unique handle id, and required fields with corresponding info. See below graph for more intuitive understanding.

SMBIOS Table

Installation

Note: Python3 is recommended to run this tool. The following instruction assumes Python3 is installed on the host.

To install the tool, simply run:

git clone https://github.com/google/smbios-validation-tool.git
pip3 install absl-py
pip3 install termcolor

Execution

Access to the root directory of the tool and simply run:

python3 smbios_validation.py

The tool can also analyze a dmi dump file, although this is a rare use case:

python3 smbios_validation.py --file=path/to/your/dump_file.txt

Output

The tool is designed to provide the error and suggested action messages as clearly as possible, to help users correct errors in SMBIOS much easier.

Whenever the tool finds a rule is not valid on the host, an error message in a fixed format will be printed out, followed by the suggested action. The tool uses termcolor to highlight the output to make it more readable. Please install termcolor as stated in 'Quick Start' section.

Error Messages

Error message will have fixed format for individual records, and is displayed as red color:

ERROR: Invalid <field_name> field in Type <type_id> (<type_name>) record.
Handle ID: <handle_id>

Error messages for validating groups of records do not have a fixed format, but will also contain all necessary information for debugging.

Action Messages

Action messages will provide users with the suggestion of how to fix the error. Action messages will also have fixed format for individual records, and are displayed right below the corresponding error messages as orange color and with underline:

ACTION: Please populate <field_name> field with valid string/number/handle/etc.
<Optional extra messages>

Again, action messages for validating groups of records do not have a fixed format. Our goal is to provide useful information for users to correct the error, so usually the action message will clearly state what the rule is and/or which part of the rule is not valid.

Troubleshooting

No such file or directory: 'dmidecode': 'dmidecode'

Usually dmidecode should be included in Linux package. If this is not the case, install dmidecode first, and ensure the dmidecode executable is available in PATH when executing the utility, then run the following command:

PATH=$PATH:. python3 smbios_validation.py