xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/nvram.4 (revision e0c4386e7e71d93b0edc0c8fa156263fc4a8b0b6)
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27.Dd February 8, 2010
28.Dt NVRAM 4
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm nvram
32.Nd "non-volatile RAM"
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34To compile this driver into the kernel,
35place the following line in your
36kernel configuration file:
37.Bd -ragged -offset indent
38.Cd "device nvram"
39.Ed
40.Pp
41Alternatively, to load the driver as a
42module at boot time, place the following line in
43.Xr loader.conf 5 :
44.Bd -literal -offset indent
45nvram_load="YES"
46.Ed
47.Sh DESCRIPTION
48The
49.Nm
50driver provides access to BIOS configuration NVRAM on i386 and amd64
51systems.
52.Pp
53PC motherboard uses a small non-volatile memory to store BIOS settings
54which is usually part of its clock chip and sometimes referred as
55.Dq CMOS SRAM .
56This driver exposes bytes 14 through 128 of the NVRAM, or a total of
57114 bytes, at offset zero of the device file
58.Pa /dev/nvram .
59.Pp
60This driver is useful for cloning machines that shares the same hardware
61configuration and need same BIOS setting tweaks.
62.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
63The BIOS NVRAM's bytes 16 through 31 are checksummed at byte 32.
64This driver
65.Em does not
66take care for these checksums.
67.Sh EXAMPLES
68Backup existing BIOS NVRAM to
69.Pa nvram.bin :
70.Pp
71.Dl dd if=/dev/nvram of=nvram.bin
72.Pp
73Restore BIOS NVRAM from
74.Pa nvram.bin :
75.Pp
76.Dl dd if=nvram.bin of=/dev/nvram
77.Sh SEE ALSO
78.Xr dd 1
79.Sh HISTORY
80The
81.Nm
82device driver first appeared in
83.Fx 6.4 .
84.Sh AUTHORS
85.An -nosplit
86The
87.Nm
88device driver was written by
89.An Peter Wemm .
90This manual page was written by
91.An Xin LI .
92