[ILUG] [TOTD] flash bios in linux

[P at draigBrady.com]

kevin lyda wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 10:58:26PM +0100, P at draigBrady.com wrote:
> 
>>Today I wanted to flash my BIOS from linux.
>>This was definitely not obvious to me so...
> 
> just curious, why?

So I can upgrade the BIOS remotely.
Also for personal use, messing with a DOS floppy
which is the standard solution is awkward.

There is nothing special about a BIOS.
It's just (an increasilngly large) lump of buggy
code like any other, and I've personally found
many bugs in most BIOS that I've used.

I guess I should also mention the related nvram.
Support for this is in the kernel by default so to use it:

# mknod /dev/nvram c 10 144
# insmod nvram

Now one can read/write the 114 bytes of nvram
(14 of the 128 are for the RTC).
It also parses some of the info to /proc/driver/nvram

-- 
Pádraig Brady - http://www.pixelbeat.org
--- Following generated by rotagator ---

Multiple X sessions

It is possible to open more than one "X" session  on  a single box.
As User #1 (from console) : $startx -- :0
As User #2 (from console) : $startx -- :1  ... and so on
Toggle between sessions with Ctrl+Alt+F(n) and Ctrl+Alt+F(n+1)
and so on ... where n is the first free tty (usually F7)
vnc or xnest can be handy for the same task also.
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