From Linux Man Pages
biostest.sh - starts the linux firmwarekit which checks the BIOS for linux compatiblity
biostest.sh [ do_not_block ] [ ssh_save=host:/dir ] [ console=ttySx,speed ] [ safemode ]
DESCRIPTION
biostest.sh Biostest checks your firmware for linux compatibility. It mainly works by parsing dmesg output and
by making use of ACPICA tools (part of pmtools package) to check ACPI parts of the BIOS. Therefore you should
only use this test with the appropriate kernel booted. If kernel output syntax changed, biostest will not work
reliable. The pmtools package may also have syntax dependencies, but if you find an ACPI related BIOS bug you
may want to try to run the biostest with an upgraded pmtools package and have a look whether the bug got fixed in
recent ACPI kernel code or whether the bug now gets workarounded.
OPTIONS
Be aware that the biostest binary checks /proc/cmdline for kernel boot params. That means you can also pass one
of following options as kernel boot parameter and biostest will make use of it. Because of that a kernel boot
parameter will always be used and you cannot revert it, better use normal parameters. Also the syntax is not
linux conform and options do not start with -.
do_not_block
Biostest will exit after checks have been performed and results have been written
ssh_save=host:/dir
Specify a destinition in scp syntax to save the results to. This might break a bit the ncurses/newt win-
dows as scp requires a password from stdin. If you want to automate the test you can use ssh keys (so
that you don't have to pass a password to save the results away via scp) and also use the do_not_block
option. This is only recommended in a trusted network environment, see ssh and ssh-keygen manpages. The
results will then be saved into host:/dir/results_ DATE_STRING is assembled from current hour,min and
date.
console=ttySx,speed
Use serial console for output/input. The parameter has the same syntax than the kernel parameter (only
supports ttyS), but does not support the flow control , parity and number of bits extension (default is
ttySx,speedn8)
safemode
Start in safemode
EXTEND THE KIT WITH SELFWRITTEN TESTS
The tool is plugin based and it's easy to extend with selfwritten tests. Following programming/scripting lan-
guages are supported to add additional plugins:
- Shell
- Perl
- C library that gets dynamically loaded
- C standalone executable
See online documentation for further details.
BUGS
The linuxfirmwarekit has been released recently. If you find any bugs please report to the linuxfirmwarekit mail-
inglist which you find at the link below.
The kernel's ring buffer will get emptied. Therefore dmesg will only report new kernel messages. All messages
until biostest invokation will get lost. See /var/log/boot.msg for kernel messages during boot up or save dmesg
output before invoking biostest manually.
RELATED
http://www.linuxfirmwarekit.org
If you find bugs, please report them against the bugtracking system: http://bughost.org/firmwarekit/
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