On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, James Sutherland wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Stephen Frost wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, James Sutherland wrote:
> >
> > > Nope. Just have a normal system which does NOT allow the restricted
> > > commands, and on the rare occasion I need to reflash the firmware or BIOS,
> > > reboot with a disk which allows me to. That's how I do it now, and that's
> > > how it should be done, IMO.
> >
> > Personally I'd like to see a Linux system *not* dependant on DOS for
> > such things. The idea of a vendor-specific key to enable writing to the
> > flash makes alot of sense to me. So does a jumper, but a jumper requires
> > more manual intervention and probably taking down the machine, which is
> > something I don't like doing. :)
>
> WTF does DOS come in? If they wanted, they could use a Linux kernel with
> the filter bypassed. I'd regard using Linux just to write some data to
> memory as overkill, TBH; FreeDOS would probably make more sense for a lot
> of things. However, I do NOT want to see this sort of highly unusual
> action supported in the standard kernel: if you reflash your BIOS or
> firmware, you will need to reboot anyway. Why not use a manufacturer's
> boot disk/image? That way, they can't blame it on your anti-virus daemon,
> your NIC, the kernel version you're running, etc.
DOS was a example, and personally I'd prefer to not have the vendors
having the hack the linux kernel in order to be able to provide an ability
to upgrade the firmware. As it is now there is a nice simple interface they
may be able to use.
You only have to reset the device you flash. Sometimes you
don't *have* to do that. With SCSI a system can be configured such that
you could do the upgrade w/ the machine running and then just reset the
device. Similar can be done with IDE, though I've only done it on IDE
CDROM drives and not yet with a HD. I do suspect it would work though.
Stephen
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