In <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007251526260.15159-100000@dax.joh.cam.ac.uk> James Sutherland (jas88@cam.ac.uk) 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?
For example our server do not have floppy drive at all. It does not have
kerboard or attached monitor as well. And it's quite possible that vendor's
image will be unable to cope with our Ethernet cards with 17,20 & 21 IRQ
and will be unable to find IDE with 22 IRQ so any drive attached to that IDE
will be out of reach for update program...
> That way, they can't blame it on your anti-virus daemon, your NIC,
> the kernel version you're running, etc.
Without my NIC I'll be unable to do ANYTHING with my system, sorry.
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