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authorMike Waychison <mikew@google.com>2011-03-11 20:43:32 -0500
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>2011-03-14 11:40:51 -0400
commit54fad532b29aa9145f12a83f4f82820c2f23b4e2 (patch)
treee56b0914ddd10a6a842914e9c851977e30201217 /Documentation/ABI/stable
parent4fc756bd9dbf6b84fbf751e3bf495277849c5db7 (diff)
efivars: Add Documentation
This patch documents the interface exposed by the 'efivars' module. Signed-off-by: Mike Waychison <mikew@google.com> Cc: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com>, Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
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1What: /sys/firmware/efi/vars
2Date: April 2004
3Contact: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com>
4Description:
5 This directory exposes interfaces for interactive with
6 EFI variables. For more information on EFI variables,
7 see 'Variable Services' in the UEFI specification
8 (section 7.2 in specification version 2.3 Errata D).
9
10 In summary, EFI variables are named, and are classified
11 into separate namespaces through the use of a vendor
12 GUID. They also have an arbitrary binary value
13 associated with them.
14
15 The efivars module enumerates these variables and
16 creates a separate directory for each one found. Each
17 directory has a name of the form "<key>-<vendor guid>"
18 and contains the following files:
19
20 attributes: A read-only text file enumerating the
21 EFI variable flags. Potential values
22 include:
23
24 EFI_VARIABLE_NON_VOLATILE
25 EFI_VARIABLE_BOOTSERVICE_ACCESS
26 EFI_VARIABLE_RUNTIME_ACCESS
27 EFI_VARIABLE_HARDWARE_ERROR_RECORD
28 EFI_VARIABLE_AUTHENTICATED_WRITE_ACCESS
29
30 See the EFI documentation for an
31 explanation of each of these variables.
32
33 data: A read-only binary file that can be read
34 to attain the value of the EFI variable
35
36 guid: The vendor GUID of the variable. This
37 should always match the GUID in the
38 variable's name.
39
40 raw_var: A binary file that can be read to obtain
41 a structure that contains everything
42 there is to know about the variable.
43 For structure definition see "struct
44 efi_variable" in the kernel sources.
45
46 This file can also be written to in
47 order to update the value of a variable.
48 For this to work however, all fields of
49 the "struct efi_variable" passed must
50 match byte for byte with the structure
51 read out of the file, save for the value
52 portion.
53
54 **Note** the efi_variable structure
55 read/written with this file contains a
56 'long' type that may change widths
57 depending on your underlying
58 architecture.
59
60 size: As ASCII representation of the size of
61 the variable's value.
62
63
64 In addition, two other magic binary files are provided
65 in the top-level directory and are used for adding and
66 removing variables:
67
68 new_var: Takes a "struct efi_variable" and
69 instructs the EFI firmware to create a
70 new variable.
71
72 del_var: Takes a "struct efi_variable" and
73 instructs the EFI firmware to remove any
74 variable that has a matching vendor GUID
75 and variable key name.