BIOS Event Logging via Dispatcher Protocol
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional information handling systems lack a comprehensive and unified solution for logging BIOS-level events, leading to siloed and incomplete data trails during system boot, making it difficult to analyze malfunctions and misconfigurations.
Innovation Solution
A method is introduced that identifies BIOS-level events, creates event data, and uses a dispatcher protocol to aggregate and store this data in a temporary store with timestamps, generating a database log of events related to a particular boot, which is then filtered and processed by event consumer modules for storage and analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If conventional siloed logging systems are used for BIOS-level events, then each logging module operates independently with simple structure, but the data trail becomes fragmented and incomplete making system analysis difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple siloed logging modules into a unified logging system where all BIOS-level event sources write to a common event log data structure. This consolidation ensures that all events are captured in a single coherent data trail, eliminating the information loss that occurs with fragmented logging while managing complexity through standardized interfaces and a central event queue.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal logging interface that can handle multiple types of BIOS-level events from different sources through a common architecture. The event log data structure and processing pipeline are designed to be multi-functional, accommodating various event types (hardware errors, configuration changes, boot events) without requiring separate specialized logging systems for each event category.
2Reliability
If a unified logging system is implemented to capture all BIOS-level events, then complete event data trail is achieved, but the system complexity and implementation difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the unified logging system into distinct functional components: event sources that generate events, an event queue that buffers events, a logging module that processes events, and a data structure that stores events. This segmentation allows each component to be developed, tested, and maintained independently while working together to provide reliable comprehensive logging, thus managing system complexity through modular architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an event queue as an intermediary component between event sources and the logging processing system. This mediator buffers events from multiple sources, standardizes their format, and manages the flow of event data to the logging module, thereby ensuring reliable event capture while simplifying the interface between diverse event sources and the processing logic.
3Loss of information
If multiple logging modules operate independently, then each module has simple implementation, but the resulting data trails are fragmented and do not provide clear system state information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines fragmented event logs from multiple independent modules into a single unified event log data structure that maintains chronological order and contextual relationships between events. This merging allows analysts to trace the complete system state progression during boot and operation, making it easy to understand how the system reached a particular state without having to correlate multiple separate log files.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent standardizes the event log data structure with uniform fields for timestamp, event source, event type, and description across all BIOS-level events. This homogeneity in data format, regardless of the originating event source, simplifies analysis by providing consistent structure and terminology throughout the entire event trail, making it easier to search, filter, and interpret events without dealing with format variations.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer programs encoded on computer storage medium, for identifying, during a particular boot of an information handling system, basic input/output system (BIOS)-level events, each BIOS-level event associated with a different BIOS log event source; for each BIOS-level event: creating, by a respective driver computing module associated with the BIOS-level event, event data for the BIOS-level event; calling, by the respective driver computing module associated with the BIOS-level event, a dispatcher protocol to provide the event data associated with the respective driver computing module to a dispatcher computing module; placing, by the dispatcher computing module, each of the event data in a temporary data store, wherein each of the event data is unaltered; and creating, by the dispatcher computing module, a database log of the event data, including aggregating each of the event data to generate a sequence of events related to the particular boot of the IHS.