Re: [PATCH v2] acpi: Permit OEM ID and OEM table ID fields to be changed

[Michael Tokarev]

22.12.2020 14:33, Marian Posteuca wrote:
> Qemu's ACPI table generation sets the fields OEM ID and OEM table ID
> to "BOCHS " and "BXPCxxxx" where "xxxx" is replaced by the ACPI
> table name.
>
> Some games like Red Dead Redemption 2 seem to check the ACPI OEM ID
> and OEM table ID for the strings "BOCHS" and "BXPC" and if they are
> found, the game crashes(this may be an intentional detection
> mechanism to prevent playing the game in a virtualized environment).

This isn't a technical question/comment about the patch itself, but
about something different.  Do we really want to play this whack-a-mole
game? If we change ACPI table IDs, those who want to disallow running
their software inside qemu/kvm will find some other way to check for
this environment. We will change that, - just to be found again. And
so on.. is it productive? I don't think so.

I'm not against this patch in any way, not at all, - having this ability
is good for other purpose too. But I think we can't won in this "detect
if we're running under qemu" battle easily. And the next version of the
same game will have a more sofisticated detection method and we won't
even know which way they used.

Thanks,

/mjt