From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from firstgate.proxmox.com (firstgate.proxmox.com [212.224.123.68]) by lore.proxmox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 26C0B1FF13B for ; Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:28:58 +0200 (CEST) Received: from firstgate.proxmox.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by firstgate.proxmox.com (Proxmox) with ESMTP id F339AC86; Wed, 8 Apr 2026 09:29:32 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <13daa754-92c2-4320-80dd-5347135dad26@proxmox.com> Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2026 09:28:57 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Beta Subject: Re: [PATCH qemu-server v3] fix #5578: smbios: set serial number To: Manuel Federanko , pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com References: <20260303104919.33634-1-m.federanko@proxmox.com> <4bd31261-0287-49ab-9af5-e05334454075@proxmox.com> <8136f97d-f372-46c3-98a9-f789cba7890c@proxmox.com> Content-Language: en-US From: Dominik Csapak In-Reply-To: <8136f97d-f372-46c3-98a9-f789cba7890c@proxmox.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Bm-Milter-Handled: 55990f41-d878-4baa-be0a-ee34c49e34d2 X-Bm-Transport-Timestamp: 1775633271318 X-SPAM-LEVEL: Spam detection results: 0 AWL 0.048 Adjusted score from AWL reputation of From: address BAYES_00 -1.9 Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% DMARC_MISSING 0.1 Missing DMARC policy KAM_DMARC_STATUS 0.01 Test Rule for DKIM or SPF Failure with Strict Alignment RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_CERTIFIED_BLOCKED 0.001 ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to Validity was blocked. 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SPF_HELO_NONE 0.001 SPF: HELO does not publish an SPF Record SPF_PASS -0.001 SPF: sender matches SPF record Message-ID-Hash: 3J3NI5Z4KBV36FUMA5H2AU5QRQL5PC4Q X-Message-ID-Hash: 3J3NI5Z4KBV36FUMA5H2AU5QRQL5PC4Q X-MailFrom: d.csapak@proxmox.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; loop; banned-address; emergency; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.10 Precedence: list List-Id: Proxmox VE development discussion List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On 4/7/26 5:36 PM, Manuel Federanko wrote: > On 2026-04-07 3:26 PM, Dominik Csapak wrote: >> not sure if it was discussed off-list, but you didn't really >> address fionas comment about just adding this conditionally, >> e.g. via ostype or machine version >> >> this will increase the config size by a bit and i guess >> most guest operating systems don't gain much from this? >> >> i'm guilty of adding such flags unconditionally myself in the past >> (see vmgenid) but i think we should avoid that when possible >> >> e.g. an empty config (qm create ID) >> looks like this currently: >> >> ``` >> boot: >> meta: creation-qemu=10.2.1,ctime=1775568119 >> smbios1: uuid=a0f6c957-1c8b-439f-b25a-1e45dc151263 >> vmgenid: 0ed5ca0d-0e72-4c1a-b62f-ad2f7aaa8819 >> ``` >> >> with your patch it looks like this: >> >> ``` >> boot: >> meta: creation-qemu=10.2.1,ctime=1775568283 >> smbios1: >> base64=1,serial=UFZFLWM5OTY3ZDQwLTVlZTUtNDQ1My1hZDI0LTljZWUzODJmZTg1ZA==,uuid=c9967d40-5ee5-4453-ad24-9cee382fe85d >> vmgenid: 1c7fe857-3520-4a20-8e09-611a7fb1be3b >> ``` >> >> which is quite a bit of noise. > > Agreed, I'm against magically setting this if we detect a specific OS, > since in theory any program on any OS can depend on the serial. Some > specific Microsoft software is the reason for this patch, but I would > be surprised if it is the only one. > >> >> If you think it's worthwhile to have a serial number for every guest, >> we could e.g. still give it to qemus commandline if it's >> missing in the config (especially if it's the same as the >> normal uuid, but prefixed with PVE-) >> IMHO it makes no sense having the same uuid twice in the config. >> >> if someone sets a serial manually, we should use that of course. > > That's a good idea - could there be a use-case of wanting the serial > to not be set? If that is not the case then I'd prefer this approach. we probably cannot add it unconditionally, since that might trip up live-migration (to be tested though). we could think about guarding with a machine version, or using a special value as serial (something like 'pve-auto') that gets replaced by the actual "PVE-uuid' part. that would be shorter and we wouldn't duplicate the uuid. > >> sorry if any of these were discussed already, i checked the m-l >> but didn't find any discussion regarding this. >> > I'm not sure anymore tbh. I talked about this with Stoiko off-list, > but it might've only concerned the format/prefix of the serial. > > Anyways thanks for the feedback.