Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
Dan Shimshoni wrote: Is there an API which enable me to perform such a task ? Did anybody tried a thing like that ? and in case it is possible - how much complex is it ? How about this (never tried it myself): Make sure /dev/cmos exists, and that the relevant kernel module is available. Set your bios to boot from CD copy /dev/cmos to a file Set your bios to not boot from CS copy /dev/cmos to another file Copy the relevant file to /dev/cmos. Warning: If, as a result of following this procedure, you lose all of your bios settings, your machine becomes unbootable, your power supply catches fire and your wife leaves you, preferring your cat, do not hold me liable. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
2007/1/22, Dan Shimshoni [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello linux il , I had been playing with the idea of writing a small utility in C on linux which will enable me to change boot prioirity on a linux machine, so that I will be able to toggle the boot sequence (boot from CD/ not boot from CD). I mean the boot sequence which the BIOS saves in CMOS. This is a task which I do quite frequently by entering the BIOS. Is there an API which enable me to perform such a task ? Did anybody tried a thing like that ? and in case it is possible - how much complex is it ? There is a module/driver/device called /dev/nvram (modprobe nvram) which gives you read/write access to the cmos ram. As far as I know, it's not completely documented - it might as well completely undocumented, I did not do a thorough search. You can dump it to a file before and after making the desired change in your BIOS's setup, and cmp to find what changed. Then you can write a small script (probably something like cat some1bytefile | dd bs=1 of=/dev/nvram seek=NN but might be a bit more complex) that does this change. I used such a technique to do some other change to the cmos ram of a class of machines, and it usually, but IIRC not always, worked. -- Didi
Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
Remember that the CMOS also holds the time so doing such an operation will reset the time. -- Ori Idan On 1/22/07, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan Shimshoni wrote: Is there an API which enable me to perform such a task ? Did anybody tried a thing like that ? and in case it is possible - how much complex is it ? How about this (never tried it myself): Make sure /dev/cmos exists, and that the relevant kernel module is available. Set your bios to boot from CD copy /dev/cmos to a file Set your bios to not boot from CS copy /dev/cmos to another file Copy the relevant file to /dev/cmos. Warning: If, as a result of following this procedure, you lose all of your bios settings, your machine becomes unbootable, your power supply catches fire and your wife leaves you, preferring your cat, do not hold me liable. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
Ori Idan wrote:
Remember that the CMOS also holds the time so doing such an operation
will reset the time.
I find it highly unlikely that the CMOS holds the real time clock. It's
not the sort of thing you save in memory.
sunlap:~# cp /dev/nvram /tmp/dump1 ; sleep 10 ; cp /dev/nvram
/tmp/dump2 ; diff /tmp/dump{1,2} echo identical
identical
No, it does not seem to be part of the CMOS.
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd.
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Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
In DOS days I wrote such a thing. It would boot into DOS and then select based on the contents of a file whether to stay in DOS, go on to windows or boot linux using loadlin. The DOS step was necessary because of sound drivers. The utility was also accessible from linux and from windows, each allowing the 'next' OS to be selected at reboot. I am not aware of a portable API for selecting the boot device. The BIOS boot device selection is buried deep in NVRAM and different by manufacturer etc. Tinkering with NVRAM is dangerous. It is possible at least on certain boards to select a CPU multiplier or supply voltage that will fry it or the chipset. The BIOS normal UI settings prevent that but devious hacking can end up in *pow*! Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Swiftfox for Duo Core 2
On 22/01/07, Moshe Gorohovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, According to http://mikeshardware.co.uk/CPURoadmap.htm, Pentium M is a successor to Prescott on mobile platforms. Core Duo is a successor to Pentium M. Core Duo 2 is a successor to Core Duo. Thanks. That's an interesting page. What to choose for gcc's -march flag on Core Duo 2 ? Uh, badababa gagga. I'l let the Swiftfox developer handle that. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com/what_is/drm.html http://dramatherapy.info = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyrighting 5000 year old stuff for fun profit
Of course someone had to do this eventually. This is totally unbelievable. I think that examples like this should be popularized as much as possible in the interest of the popularization of the evil that the patenting and copyrighting system for business practices represents: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1815971,00.asp Soon to come: The exact position and sequence of operations in which a male or female employee uses a urinal in breaks while at work will be copyrighted as a 'business practice' as it will be demonstrated that using this position saves 10 minutes of work time per year and employee. After that we will talk baby sleeping positions in a cot and city bus standing patterns. Peter P. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A new approach to illegal downloads
On 18/01/07, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Excellent novel Open Source type approach to a serious problem from EA. I hope that the idiots who push DRM and 'media control' get the point and take the hint: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/17/yourmoney/media.php Peter P. I don't think that's exactly open source. But it is innovative. I'm not even a gamer, but I'd try the game for free. It might open them up a whole new marker of otherwise-non-gamers. Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/654/frost.html http://fedoratricks.com = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can this be possible (or BIOS api)
On Monday January 22 2007 09:44, Dan Shimshoni wrote: Hello linux il , I had been playing with the idea of writing a small utility in C on linux which will enable me to change boot prioirity on a linux machine, so that I will be able to toggle the boot sequence (boot from CD/ not boot from CD). I mean the boot sequence which the BIOS saves in CMOS. Why not leave it to the bootloader to take care of El-Torito bootable CD-ROMs? There are bin files that take care of that both for lilo and grub, last time I checked, and a Gentoo howto on the topic. -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Copyrighting 5000 year old stuff for fun profit
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 02:35:12PM +0200, Peter wrote: Of course someone had to do this eventually. This is totally unbelievable. I think that examples like this should be popularized as much as possible in the interest of the popularization of the evil that the patenting and copyrighting system for business practices represents: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1815971,00.asp Soon to come: The exact position and sequence of operations in which a male or female employee uses a urinal in breaks while at work will be copyrighted as a 'business practice' as it will be demonstrated that using this position saves 10 minutes of work time per year and employee. After that we will talk baby sleeping positions in a cot and city bus standing patterns. Quite off-topic to this list. I'll just note that copyright is not really a good way to protect those positions: if someone else can demostrate that he developed a number of those positions independently, copyright will no longer hold. This is clearly a place that a patent is more suitable, if at all. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] || best ICQ# 16849755 || friend t = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning my laptop's HD over the network (LG T1 Express)
I usually use dump recover for such tasks. That way I'm only copying the relevant parts of the filesystem + I'm not dependent on a specific HD structure. On 1/21/07, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 12:02:57AM +0200, Chaim Keren Tzion wrote: BTW, did you try Knoppix instead of g4l? Also note that the partition-copying that g4l does is done by partimage. partimage is included in several other live CDs. And then again there are the methods of tar | nc --- nc | tar (or ssh insead, of dd instead of tar, or whatever). -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] || best ICQ# 16849755 || friend t = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why are GNOME applications (and applets) take so much [EMAIL PROTECTED] memory ?
Memory-usage in a modern OS is complicated, as many people on this list have already shown. While most users will cry memory leak and give out incorrect observations (and power-users can often get very technical speaking about something they don't thoroughly understand), their complaints do reflect a problem. That's why, in the recent year, memory consumption and performance problems have generated a lot of developer interest in the GNOME circles, as you could see by following the Planet GNOME (http://planet.gnome.org). You can also check Federico Mena Quintero's blog ( http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news.html) for some of his notes about performance work he's been doing, if you wish to get a (developer-oriented) picture of whatever causes those things. One popular memory bug is constants which are not placed in readonly-segments in shared libraries: this causes this memory to be spent for every process linking in this library. Here you might find some more info: http://live.gnome.org/MemoryReduction The recent Linux kernels (2.6.114) added 'smaps' per-process data [2] which allows you to find out how much RSS the shared libraries are using, and thus to subtract them from the process' own RSS (its' executable data + heap). Read more about it here: http://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2006/03/memory-usage-with-smaps.html Really, there are encouraging news on that front, but the general answer to Free Software woes remains: if you want to get something done, join the effort. On 1/16/07, Oded Arbel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And can something be done about it ??
Re: Cloning my laptop's HD over the network (LG T1 Express)
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 08:13:48PM +0200, Noam Meltzer wrote: I usually use dump recover for such tasks. That way I'm only copying the relevant parts of the filesystem + I'm not dependent on a specific HD structure. partimage does generally that: dump/restore at the block level, without saving unused blocks . Thus it only needs a very minimal understanding of the filesystem it backs-up/restores. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] || best ICQ# 16849755 || friend t = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Introduction to Perl6 (Jerusalem)
Hi, tomorrow, on January 24, I am going to give an introduction to Perl6 talk on the monthly meeting of the Jerusalem Perl Mongers. It will take place in the offices of ExLibris in Malcha Technological Park (Jerusalem) - Building 9, 4th floor for more details see http://jerusalem.perl.org.il/ You can also take a look at the meeting report of the previous meeting of the Perl Mongers in Tel Aviv where I already gave this talk 3 weeks ago. http://www.perl.org.il/meetings/2007/20070104.html You are welcome to join the meeting. regards Gabor -- Gabor Szabo http://www.szabgab.com/ Perl Training in Israel http://www.pti.co.il/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Simulating PXE boot?
Hello, Is it possible to achieve the same effect of PXE boot (i.e. pull everything over the net, at most use a file on the local FAT32 disk for swap) using some DOS/Win98 software? My motivation - we have an ancient Toshiba Sattelite 4030CDT that can boot Ubuntu live from its CD-ROM but it's slow, my wife won't let me install Linux over her Win98, and on top of this the CD-ROM is slow and noisy. There is no space on the disk to install Linux besides Windows (4 or 6 Gb HD). So I though it would be great if I could just run something a-la loadlin from inside a Win98 command-window that will pull down the kernel and initramfs from my Debian Etch desktop and bootstrap from that, using NFS root mount from the Debian disk. Once I have this I suppose it should be easy to setup some XFCE or KDE-based environment to accomodate for the modest CPU and RAM. Does such a thing exist? Thanks, --Amos
Re: Simulating PXE boot?
2007/1/23, Amos Shapira [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello, Is it possible to achieve the same effect of PXE boot (i.e. pull everything over the net, at most use a file on the local FAT32 disk for swap) using some DOS/Win98 software? For a tool allowing you to do it yourself, look at etherboot. For a framework doing most of this for you, look at ltsp.org. My motivation - we have an ancient Toshiba Sattelite 4030CDT that can boot Ubuntu live from its CD-ROM but it's slow, my wife won't let me install Linux over her Win98, and on top of this the CD-ROM is slow and noisy. There is no space on the disk to install Linux besides Windows (4 or 6 Gb HD). So I though it would be great if I could just run something a-la loadlin from inside a Win98 command-window that will pull down the kernel loadlin actually might be good enough and if you know it well might be less work than PXE or etherboot. Copy your favourite kernel+initrd to the laptop and set up e.g. a config.sys/autoexec.bat menu. For that matter, you can take the kernel+initrd from ltsp.org above. and initramfs from my Debian Etch desktop and bootstrap from that, using NFS root mount from the Debian disk. Once I have this I suppose it should be easy to setup some XFCE or KDE-based environment to accomodate for the modest CPU and RAM. Or maybe to run on the laptop only an X server that will -query your box. Assuming she would at least want to use a recent version of firefox, I would not recommend running it locally (from nfsroot or whatever) with less than 256MB RAM. -- Didi
Re: Simulating PXE boot?
Try to test it using the terminal server built into knoppix. Run knoppix on a 'server' turn on terminal server services and make a boot floppy using it, the boot the Toshiba with the floppy. This will not be fast but you can do it in an hour. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
