Board Inspector Tool¶

This guide describes all features and uses of the tool.

About the Board Inspector Tool¶

The Board Inspector tool board_inspector.py enables you to generate a board configuration file on the target system. The board configuration file stores hardware-specific information extracted from the target platform and is used to customize your ACRN configuration.

Prerequisites¶

This guide assumes you have set up your target system and successfully launched the Board Inspector. For steps, see the following Getting Started Guide sections:

Generate a Board Configuration File¶

Important

Whenever you change the configuration of the board, such as peripherals, BIOS settings, additional memory, USB devices, or PCI devices, you must generate a new board configuration file.

The following steps describe all options in the Board Inspector for generating a board configuration file.

Run the Board Inspector tool (board_inspector.py) to generate the board configuration file. This example assumes the tool is in the ~/acrn-work/ directory and my_board is the desired file name. Feel free to modify the commands as needed.
```
cd ~/acrn-work
sudo board_inspector.py my_board
```
Confirm that the board configuration file my_board.xml was generated in the current directory.

Command-Line Options¶

You can configure the Board Inspector via command-line options. Running the Board Inspector with the -h option yields the following usage message:

usage: board_inspector.py [-h] [--out OUT] [--basic] [--loglevel LOGLEVEL]
                          [--check-device-status]
                          [--add-llc-cat <capacity_mask_length:int>,<clos_number:int>,<has_CDP:bool>]
                          board_name

positional arguments:
  board_name            the name of the board that runs the ACRN hypervisor

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --out OUT             the name of board info file
  --basic               do not extract advanced information such as ACPI
                        namespace
  --loglevel LOGLEVEL   choose log level, e.g. debug, info, warning, error or
                        critical
  --check-device-status
                        filter out devices whose _STA object evaluates to 0
  --add-llc-cat <capacity_mask_length:int>,<clos_number:int>,<has_CDP:bool>
                        manually set the Cache Allocation Technology
                        capability of the last level cache

Details about certain arguments:

Argument	Details
`board_name`	Required. The board name is used as the file name of the board configuration file and is placed inside the file for other tools to read.
`--out`	Optional. Specify a file path where the board configuration file will be saved (example: `~/acrn_work`). If only a filename is provided in this option, the Board Inspector will generate the file in the current directory.
`--basic`	Optional. By default, the Board Inspector parses the ACPI namespace when generating board configuration files. This option provides a way to disable ACPI namespace parsing in case the parsing blocks the generation of board configuration files.
`--loglevel`	Optional. Choose the log level. (Default is warning.)
`--check-device-status`	Optional. On some boards, the device status (reported by the _STA object) returns 0 while the device object is still useful for pass-through devices. By default, the Board Inspector includes the devices in the board configuration file. This option filters out the devices, so that they cannot be used.
`--add-llc-cat`	Optional. Add the Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) capabilities of the last level cache (LLC) to the generated board configuration file even when the hardware does not report them for any reason. For example, `--add-llc-cat=12,16,y`. CDP (Code and Data Prioritization) performance feature enables separate control over code and data placement in the processor’s cache. Valid values for `bool` are `true\|false\|y\|n\|yes\|no`.