.\" .\"Copyright (c) 2010 iXsystems, Inc. .\"All rights reserved. .\" written by: Xin LI .\" .\"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\"modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\"are met: .\"1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\"THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\"ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\"IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\"ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\"FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\"DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\"OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\"HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\"LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\"OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\"SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD: head/share/man/man4/nvram.4 203684 2010-02-08 20:53:29Z gavin $ .\" .Dd February 8, 2010 .Dt NVRAM 4 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm nvram .Nd "non-volatile RAM" .Sh SYNOPSIS To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel configuration file: .Bd -ragged -offset indent .Cd "device nvram" .Ed .Pp Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in .Xr loader.conf 5 : .Bd -literal -offset indent nvram_load="YES" .Ed .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm driver provides access to BIOS configuration NVRAM on i386 and amd64 systems. .Pp PC motherboard uses a small non-volatile memory to store BIOS settings which is usually part of its clock chip and sometimes referred as .Dq CMOS SRAM . This driver exposes bytes 14 through 128 of the NVRAM, or a total of 114 bytes, at offset zero of the device file .Pa /dev/nvram . .Pp This driver is useful for cloning machines that shares the same hardware configuration and need same BIOS setting tweaks. .Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES The BIOS NVRAM's bytes 16 through 31 are checksummed at byte 32. This driver .Em does not take care for these checksums. .Sh EXAMPLES Backup existing BIOS NVRAM to .Pa nvram.bin : .Pp .Dl dd if=/dev/nvram of=nvram.bin .Pp Restore BIOS NVRAM from .Pa nvram.bin : .Pp .Dl dd if=nvram.bin of=/dev/nvram .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr dd 1 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm device driver first appeared in .Fx 6.4 . .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit The .Nm device driver was written by .An Peter Wemm . This manual page was written by .An Xin LI .