Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/2] hvmloader: remove timestamp from smbios

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 03/02/15 16:15, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 03.02.15 at 17:02, <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 03/02/15 15:54, Olaf Hering wrote:
>>> Including a timestamp into the binary makes it impossible to get
>>> reproducible binaries. Remove the timestamp because it carries no
>>> valuable info.
>> I agree with the sentiment, but this is not how to do it.
>>
>> A release date is part of the SMBIOS spec, and the change below results
>> in a malformed smbios table (stale p->release_date_str = 3; pointer)
>>
>> A better approach would be to derive the date from the commit date of
>> HEAD, which would be consistent across rebuilds.
> Except that this information may not be available, and isn't really
> relevant. Instead I'd suggest using the source time stamp of
> smbios.c, as that's really the (almost) only thing controlling the
> data presented to the guest.
>
> Or maybe - considering that git checkouts use the current time
> for file timestamps rather than the last modification time - use
> HEAD's if available, and fall back to smbios.c's otherwise.

Both good points.  That sounds like the best approach.

~Andrew


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