Incorrect and unhelpful log reporting of VERR_PDM_DEVINS_UNKNOWN_CFG_VALUES details

[sbpetrack]

I set a bunch of EFI "Bios Dmi Information" Key/Value pairs for a Windows 10 Guest on a(n arch) Linux host. I doubt very much that particular details of VirtualBox, Host or Guest matter for what happened; but if they do, surely they are in the attached Log. When I started up the VM, the result was an abortion + pop-up as follows:

Configuration error: Invalid config value(s) for the EFI device (VERR_PDM_DEVINS_UNKNOWN_CFG_VALUES). Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) Component: ConsoleWrap Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}

Clear Enough. But when I looked at the Log to see my error, the relevant line (line 663 in the attached log) was:´

00:00:00.993661 PDM: Failed to construct 'efi'/0! VERR_PDM_DEVINS_UNKNOWN_CFG_VALUES (-2801) - A device encountered an unknown configuration value. This means that the device is potentially misconfigured and the device construction or unit attachment failed because of this.

It was not possible to determine from this which assignment contained the error or why. Comparing strings for minute errors is extremely tedious and error-prone, especiallly when the were no obvious typos in any of the strings I had set.

Eventually I realized that the problem was simply that I had set an entirely non-existent Bios Parameter. The mistaken command was

VBoxManage setextradata "Win10 raw" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemBiosVersion" "DELL - 1072009 1.7.0 American Megatrends - 500"

and I now see that there is no such key in the documentation. so entering

VBoxManage setextradata "Win10 raw" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemBiosVersion"

unset the key and enabled my VM to start -- but that took me an exhausting 45 minutes, when it could/should have taken me a trivial 2-3 minutes. I understand that it is "feature request" to ask that the log file contain information that it doesn't contain today. It is also a feature request to ask that there be an error returned already from a "setextradata" request which is 100% certain to cause a failure at VM Runtime. But it is a Buig Report to state that the log contains information which is misleading and unhelpful: I doubt that "PDM failed to construct 'efi'/o! " (which is what the log reports), and even if it did, it's not useful or relevant to the reader of the log. And it also wasn't a an unknown configuration value that was the problem, it was an unknown NAME of a Dmi Information key that was the problem. And since the code knew that the particular name it didn know was DmiSystemBiosInformation, it could and should have shared this information with the user.

Please at least remove the misinformation from the log ; but I hope you will also consider REPLACING that with the actual offending key or value, as a welcome time-saver to the user.

Please note that I filed this under "other" as the component. There is no component of either "Log" or "Configuration". I thought to file it under "EFI", but i am sure that it applies to BIOS VMs as well.

With thanks, scott

[sbpetrack]

Log of aborted start to VM with a bad (efi) dmi bios key/value pair