Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:00:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:00:11 -0400 Received: from deimos.hpl.hp.com ([192.6.19.190]:32984 "EHLO deimos.hpl.hp.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:00:10 -0400 From: David Mosberger MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15540.35767.394315.176611@napali.hpl.hp.com> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 12:00:07 -0700 To: Jan-Benedict Glaw Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Generic access to firmware environment variables In-Reply-To: <20020410184231.GC8136@lug-owl.de> X-Mailer: VM 7.03 under Emacs 21.1.1 Reply-To: davidm@hpl.hp.com X-URL: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/David_Mosberger/ Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org >>>>> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002 20:42:31 +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw said: Jan-Benedict> Hi! I've developed a driver to access environment Jan-Benedict> variables on Alpha computers from userspace through Jan-Benedict> procfs some time ago. These days, I updated the Jan-Benedict> driver. While doing this, I also looked at other Jan-Benedict> architectures; some of them also do have some kind of Jan-Benedict> environment variables in firmware: Jan-Benedict> Alphas - SRM firmware SGI Workstations - ARCS Jan-Benedict> firmware MIPS/ITE-Boards - PMON m68k/MAC - ?? (info is Jan-Benedict> placed into a "bootinfo" struct) IA64 - (_seems_ to Jan-Benedict> know about environment...) Jan-Benedict> They all access environment variables either by name, Jan-Benedict> or by an internally handles number. For Alpha, I've Jan-Benedict> (now) implemented both, access by name (if variable Jan-Benedict> name is known/described) and access by generic number. Jan-Benedict> I think it would be useful to have something like this Jan-Benedict> for other architectures as well. So I'm currently Jan-Benedict> thinking about implementing a base driver (like Jan-Benedict> parport does) and additional modules to implement Jan-Benedict> machine/architecture specific access methode (like Jan-Benedict> parport_pc). Jan-Benedict> It's easy to code, so what do you think of this? On EFI platforms, there is /proc/efi/vars. The module was written by Matt Domsch . EFI is used on ia64 and x86 servers. Note that EFI variables can contain arbitrary binary data, not just text strings. --david - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/