FreeBSD manual
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NVRAM(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual NVRAM(4)
NAME
nvram - non-volatile RAM
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your
kernel configuration file:
device nvram
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
nvram_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The nvram driver provides access to BIOS configuration NVRAM on i386 and
amd64 systems.
PC motherboard uses a small non-volatile memory to store BIOS settings
which is usually part of its clock chip and sometimes referred as "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 /dev/nvram.
This driver is useful for cloning machines that shares the same hardware
configuration and need same BIOS setting tweaks.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The BIOS NVRAM's bytes 16 through 31 are checksummed at byte 32. This
driver does not take care for these checksums.
EXAMPLES
Backup existing BIOS NVRAM to nvram.bin:
dd if=/dev/nvram of=nvram.bin
Restore BIOS NVRAM from nvram.bin:
dd if=nvram.bin of=/dev/nvram
SEE ALSO
dd(1)
HISTORY
The nvram device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 6.4.
AUTHORS
The nvram device driver was written by Peter Wemm. This manual page was
written by Xin LI.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 February 8, 2010 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11