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deadstar
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Joined: 02 Nov 2004
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Location: England
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 Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:48 pm Post subject: Changing BIOS options from within the OS? |
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Hi,
Is it possible to change BIOS options within linux, through some sexy scripts/hacks?
The idea came to me today when I built a machine at work with an expensive Asus board. The driver disc came with a utility for changing a few (limited) BIOS options like power management settings and fan speeds. And it's been possible for many years now to flash a BIOS with an update within Windows, and change the POST bitmap, etc.
Obviously, quite a dangerous thing to play around with, but it's just for experimentation on a PII box kept hidden away, only to be probed with some SSH love now and again.
Any thoughts?
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antik
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Joined: 01 Oct 2002
Posts: 212
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:51 pm Post subject: Re: Changing BIOS options from within the OS? |
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| deadstar wrote: | Hi,
Is it possible to change BIOS options within linux, through some sexy scripts/hacks?
The idea came to me today when I built a machine at work with an expensive Asus board. The driver disc came with a utility for changing a few (limited) BIOS options like power management settings and fan speeds. And it's been possible for many years now to flash a BIOS with an update within Windows, and change the POST bitmap, etc.
Obviously, quite a dangerous thing to play around with, but it's just for experimentation on a PII box kept hidden away, only to be probed with some SSH love now and again.
Any thoughts? |
How do you flash bios if you have write protection?
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deadstar
Guru
Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 319
Location: England
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject: Re: Changing BIOS options from within the OS? |
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| antik wrote: | | deadstar wrote: | Hi,
Is it possible to change BIOS options within linux, through some sexy scripts/hacks?
The idea came to me today when I built a machine at work with an expensive Asus board. The driver disc came with a utility for changing a few (limited) BIOS options like power management settings and fan speeds. And it's been possible for many years now to flash a BIOS with an update within Windows, and change the POST bitmap, etc.
Obviously, quite a dangerous thing to play around with, but it's just for experimentation on a PII box kept hidden away, only to be probed with some SSH love now and again.
Any thoughts? |
How do you flash bios if you have write protection? |
You turn it off?
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antik
Apprentice
Joined: 01 Oct 2002
Posts: 212
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:19 pm Post subject: Re: Changing BIOS options from within the OS? |
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| deadstar wrote: | | antik wrote: | | deadstar wrote: | Hi,
Is it possible to change BIOS options within linux, through some sexy scripts/hacks?
The idea came to me today when I built a machine at work with an expensive Asus board. The driver disc came with a utility for changing a few (limited) BIOS options like power management settings and fan speeds. And it's been possible for many years now to flash a BIOS with an update within Windows, and change the POST bitmap, etc.
Obviously, quite a dangerous thing to play around with, but it's just for experimentation on a PII box kept hidden away, only to be probed with some SSH love now and again.
Any thoughts? |
How do you flash bios if you have write protection? |
You turn it off? |
You have to reboot, then enable write, reboot again, change settings, reboot, turn on write protect.... this sucks.
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MikeRS
n00b
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 71
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| There's a /dev/bios hack that can flash the BIOS of many motherboards... but I don't know anything about setting CMOS settings. |
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Vanquirius
Retired Dev
Joined: 14 Jun 2002
Posts: 1297
Location: Ethereal plains
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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Well, CPU frequency scaling has been working fine with my nforce2 motherboard for a long time now, for one...
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GNUtoo
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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yes you can flash bios from linux
it's part of the linuxbios installation
by the way i don't know if any linux uttilities exist but some advanced windows uttilities exist
they can change any settings such as pci register
some person wanting to improove their performance use them
they can change options that can't be changed inside the bios |
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energyman76b
Advocate
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 2022
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:14 am Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: | yes you can flash bios from linux
it's part of the linuxbios installation
by the way i don't know if any linux uttilities exist but some advanced windows uttilities exist
they can change any settings such as pci register
some person wanting to improove their performance use them
they can change options that can't be changed inside the bios |
you mean something like this:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/30/6437/2.html
?
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Brian Hall
Junior Member
Rate Member Icon 1 posted 03 April, 2006 06:27 PM Profile for Brian Hall Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote
I figured it out myself by reading the "BIOS and Kernel Developers Guide for the AMD Athlon64 AMD Opteron Processors", otherwise known as 26094.PDF, available from amd.com. See sections 3.5.9 and 3.5.10. Once I knew what bits to set, I spent some time and converted that to setpci commands.
We have to use setpci to set some of the DRAM config bits since they aren't settable via BIOS.
I had previously used this Guide to figure out the command to enable 1T Command Rate, which is settable by the 939Dual-Sata2 BIOSes but not in the BIOS of my AMD64 PC (MSI K8T Neo FISR):
# -----------------------------------
# Set 1T Command Rate (adds 11% memory bandwidth)
setpci -s 0:18.2 93.B=8
# Set memory speed (disabled)
#setpci -s 0:18.2 94.B=05
# Reduce read-to-write delay (Trwt)
setpci -s 0:18.2 8C=14
# use 183 memory divider
setpci -s 0:18.2 96.B=6b
# -----------------------------------
BTW, I am running 2T with 2x512MB, I have found 1T to be unstable at any speed for long-term operation on the Asrock, even with Vdimm >3.0 (OCZ DDR Booster).
####
he wrote a correction some posts later, I won't copy it here, you should have a look there - and if you like it, give him a positive rating.
I have not tried it, but you can change a LOT of stuff without touching the bios.
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allucid
Veteran
Joined: 02 Nov 2002
Posts: 1314
Location: atlanta
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| Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 7:12 am Post subject: Re: Changing BIOS options from within the OS? |
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| deadstar wrote: | | The driver disc came with a utility for changing a few (limited) BIOS options like power management settings and fan speeds. |
Use ACPI instead of APM. |
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GNUtoo
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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i was talking about WPCREDIT and WPCRSET
thanks a lot...while searching i have found a linux alternative: powertweek
and it's in portage |
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SoylentGreen
l33t
Joined: 19 Aug 2005
Posts: 904
Location: The Hostel
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: |
thanks a lot...while searching i have found a linux alternative: powertweek
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if you would have spelled it correctly, i would have found it in the 1st place 
thx anyway. powertweAk! |
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GNUtoo
Veteran
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: | i was talking about WPCREDIT and WPCRSET
thanks a lot...while searching i have found a linux alternative: powertweek
and it's in portage |
oops there are several program named powertweek... |
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