Hi, Flashing a large number of BIOSes is done regularly by members of the linuxbios (http://linuxbios.org)or openbios(www.openbios.org) project. I think Stefan Reinauer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) can answer you a lot of your questions.
Hth and kind regards, Oliver * Thomas Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070809 10:42]: > >>>>> On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:37:02 +0200, Henning Fehrmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>>>> said: > > > we are interested in flashing a BIOS image and in manipulating the > NVRAM of the motherboard > > automatically. > Wow. Do you really need this? > > > Unfortunately, using certain vendors, the access to the NVRAM is not > straightforward. > > These vendors are offering DOS tools only, to write in the NVRAM, > hence, we have to boot > > a DOS image and here starts the trouble. > You can boot a DOS or floppy image using PXE. This is how a > pxelinux.cfg looks like for booting a floppy image: > > default dos > label dos > kernel memdisk > append keeppxe initrd=floppy.img > > But AFAIR I had no success, because the dos flashing utilities seems > to wanna have a real floppy, not a fake of a floppy. > > > > Optimally, using the DOS environment flashes the BIOS, sets the > > NVRAM and sends a message to the FAI server to prepare the next boot of > the clients for the > > installation. > You could send a message to the faimond which can change the pxelinux > configuration. > > > > In the worst case, the DOS environment is working autonomously and the > FAI server is 'guessing' > > whether the BIOS is flashed or not, e.g., by analyzing the DHCP logs, > but this is not what we really want. > > Guessing if something has changed could easily be done using dmidecode, > which will give you the version of the BIOS. > > -- > regards Thomas -- * Oliver Osburg - Administrator E-lingo PH Freiburg * * email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: +49761682164 * * note: All above is my opinion unless said otherwise * * One Unix to rule them all, One Resolver to find them, * * One IP to bring them all and in the zone bind them. *
