From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 14 12:56:00 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3066316A4CE for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:56:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from wattres.Watt.COM (wattres.watt.com [66.93.133.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 111D743D9B for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:55:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from steve@Watt.COM) Received: (from steve@localhost) by wattres.Watt.COM (8.12.9/8.12.9) id i0EKtnL6085950 for hackers@freebsd.org; Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:55:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from steve) Message-Id: <200401142055.i0EKtnL6085950@wattres.Watt.COM> From: steve@Watt.COM (Steve Watt) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:55:49 -0800 X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.6 beta(5) jp(8) 11/23/00) To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: kernel environment between reboots, diskless X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 20:56:00 -0000 Greetings, I'm working on a dataless system that will be booting and rooting from flash for some environmental chamber (thermal) tests, and logging the results to an NFS server outside the chamber. The problem is that the driver for the card under test only supports one card at a time. That's relatively easy to hack around by passing in a kernel environment varible from loader that indicates which PCI slot is OK. Then the probe routine of the driver looks for that variable and won't accept the device unless it matches. I'm trying to see if there's a way to get that information into the loader (or the driver) in some way that doesn't require rewriting a file in the flash every reboot, to avoid flash write cycles. I know there's some amount of NVRAM in PCs, but didn't spot anything about how to get at it from the driver. It'd be nice, for this sort of application, if there was a way to stash somewhere between 2 and 8 bytes somewhere... Thanks for insights! Pls cc: me directly on replies. -- Steve Watt KD6GGD PP-ASEL-IA ICBM: 121W 56' 57.8" / 37N 20' 14.9" Internet: steve @ Watt.COM Whois: SW32 Free time? There's no such thing. It just comes in varying prices...