Smbios uuid inspector broken in BigFix 9.5.0 or later

[JasonWalker]

Unexpected string value from smbios structure

If you consider that a UUID is 128 bits (typically represented as 32 hex characters, but is represented as a 16 character string in your result), there is a way to parse the result in Windows to get what you want out of it. Taking the value you received and casting it to hexadecimal you will get all the hex characters of the UUID, just not in the same order you’re expecting. The SMBIOS reference specification has information on how the bytes are stored under “System - UUID” (section 7.2.1). See…

The value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios property returns a Binary-Encoded string. In the post linked above, @etorres came up with a rather elegant method of parsing it out. EDIT - having tried in earlier versions I find this is a problem new to 9.5.x -

q: (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

I see no difference in the debugger whether I use “Percent-encode results”.

• Did this method work in earlier versions of the Debugger, or did it only work in Analysis/Relevance?
• Is this problem new to 9.5.x?
• Does anyone know a method to retrieve the UUID correctly (cross-platform) that works in 9.5.2?

I’m trying to build a wizard to import Bare Metal Targets en-masse, and UUID is one of the properties we can use to link a Bare Metal Target to a real machine (Serial Number, MAC Address, and IP address being other methods). I have working code for MAC and Serial Number, but between multiple MAC addresses on a host and some systems not presenting a Serial Number, I still need to retrieve UUID in some cases.

[JasonWalker]

This does appear to be a new problem in 9.5.0 and 9.5.2; it worked correctly in 9.2.7 on Windows and Linux, but does not work on either platform in 9.5.0 or 9.5.2. I’ve opened PMR 30276,004,000 on this issue.

q: version of client
A: 9.2.7.53
T: 0.417 ms
I: singular version

q: name of operating system
A: Win7
T: 0.082 ms
I: singular string

q: (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
A: %00@%af%9f&%e8%e2%11%86%e4%88Q%fbk%c8/
T: 0.127 ms
I: singular string

q: characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
A: %00
A: @
A: %af
A: %9f
A: &
A: %e8
A: %e2
A: %11
A: %86
A: %e4
A: %88
A: Q
A: %fb
A: k
A: %c8
A: /
T: 0.301 ms
I: plural substring

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
A: 00
A: 40
A: af
A: 9f
A: 26
A: e8
A: e2
A: 11
A: 86
A: e4
A: 88
A: 51
A: fb
A: 6b
A: c8
A: 2f
T: 0.355 ms
I: plural string

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
A: 00
A: 40
A: AF
A: 9F
A: 26
A: E8
A: E2
A: 11
A: 86
A: E4
A: 88
A: 51
A: FB
A: 6B
A: C8
A: 2F
T: 0.252 ms
I: plural string

q: (first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
A: 9FAF4000-E826-11E2-86E4-8851FB6BC82F
T: 0.278 ms
I: singular string

-----

q: version of client
A: 9.5.2.56
T: 0.619 ms
I: singular version

q: name of operating system
A: Win7
T: 0.060 ms
I: singular string

q: (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string)
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

q: (first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
E: The expression could not be evaluated: class UnrepresentableBinaryString

---
Q: name of operating system
A: Linux Red Hat Enterprise Server 6.7
T: 10772

Q: version of client
A: 9.2.1.48
T: 69

Q: (first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
A: 34333834-3834-5355-4530-33384E314732
T: 340


---
Q: version of client
A: 9.5.2.56
T: 60731

Q: name of operating system
A: Linux Red Hat Enterprise Workstation 6.7
T: 115

Q: (first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of (it as hexadecimal) of characters of (value "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios as string) as uppercase
E: The expression could not be evaluated: 27UnrepresentableBinaryString
T: 14661

[etorres]

Can’t say I’ve looked at this in a while, but it looks like they added “hexadecimal of <smbios value>”… not sure if this was around when I wrote the original post. This works on my system in 9.5.2:

(first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation "" of characters of (hexadecimal of values "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios) as uppercase

Haven’t checked if there were any other changes that would make it easier for all platforms.

[JasonWalker]

@etorres

(first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & “-” & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & “-” & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & “-” & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & “-” & following text of position 20 of it) of concatenation “” of characters of (hexadecimal of values “uuid” of structures “system_information” of smbios) as uppercase

Awesome that works for me too. On Linux and on Windows. Thanks much!

I think the PMR should still be addressed, as the new method does not work on the 9.2.7 client. I’d expect the new inspectors to provide for backward-compatibility.

[JasonWalker]

A little feedback from the PMR that makes it easier to be version-independent:

Please Try the following relevence subsittuting <field name> with the   
item you are search for ( "uuid", etc)                                  
(if exists property "hexadecimal" then hexadecimal of it else it as     
string as                                                               
hexadecimal) of (value "<field name>" of structure "system_information" 
of                                                                      
smbios)                                                                 

So what I’m working with now is

((first 2 of following text of position 6 of it & first 2 of following text of position 4 of it & first 2 of following text of position 2 of it & first 2 of following text of position 0 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 10 of it & first 2 of following text of position 8 of it & "-" & first 2 of following text of position 14 of it & first 2 of following text of position 12 of it & "-" & first 4 of following text of position 16 of it & "-" & following text of position 20 of it) of (if exists property "hexadecimal" then hexadecimal of it else it as string as hexadecimal) of (value "uuid" of structure "system_information" of smbios) as uppercase)

[JasonWalker]

This is shorter and a little bit more readable, but I’m still checking the cross/platform and cross/version results:

(concatenation of(characters (6;7;4;5;2;3;0;1) of it;"-";characters(10;11;8;9) of it;"-";characters(14;15;12;13) of it;"-";characters(16;17;18;19) of it;"-";following text of position 20 of it)) of ((if exists property "hexadecimal" then hexadecimal of it else it as string as hexadecimal) of (value "uuid" of structure "system_information" of smbios) as uppercase)

[jgstew]

I just hit this problem a bit ago. I noticed it is breaking my one of my SMBIOS properties.

This is easier for the basics:

(it as trimmed string as uppercase) of (it as string | hexadecimal of it) of values "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios

I don’t like using IF/THEN/ELSE when I don’t have to and I also like to preserver the right to left nature of relevance.

I only tested this on 9.5 so I’m not sure if (it as string | hexadecimal of it) works on 9.2 or below.

---

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[JasonWalker]

I couldn’t make it work in the 9.2.7 debugger…

q: version of client
A: 9.2.7.53
T: 0.248 ms
I: singular version

q: (it as trimmed string as uppercase) of (it as string | hexadecimal of it) of values "uuid" of structures "system_information" of smbios
E: The operator "hexadecimal" is not defined.

q: ((value "uuid" of it as string as hexadecimal) | (hexadecimal of value "uuid" of it as string))  of structures "system_information" of smbios
E: The operator "hexadecimal" is not defined.

[jgstew]

That is basically what I consider a bug with the way the | operator works that prevents it from working the way I feel it should.

On a 9.2 device, it shouldn’t even consider the hexadecimal inspector unless the first part fails.