Re: How to read BIOS information

[linux-os (Dick Johnson)]

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Madhukar Mythri wrote:

> Hi,
>     Im new to this group.
> I want to get some information from BIOS. i.e i want to know whether
> Hyperthreading is Enabled/Disabled(as per BIOS settings)  from an user
> applications program.
>
> Please reply, if anybody has worked on it.
>

The BIOS settings, and where the BIOS information is stored, is
different for each and every BIOS. That's why there is a BIOS
setup screen. You can't run this screen from within the 32-bit
protected-mode environment of Linux. You could, however, implement
a VM-86 environment, just as is done for dosemu, the MS-DOS
emulator. However, dosemu creates a virtual BIOS environment and
doesn't use the real one, therefore you would have to copy over
a the real BIOS pages in order to run the BIOS setup screen.

The bottom line is that it's possible, but very difficult. That's
why relevant information is gathered by Linux and put into
the /proc file-system. If you have hyper-threading, it should
show up as two or more CPUs in /proc/cpuinfo.

> --
> Thanks & Regards
> Madhukar Mythri
> Wipro Technologies
> Bangalore.
> Off: +91 80 30294361.
> M: +91 9886442416.
>
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Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.16.4 on an i686 machine (5592.89 BogoMips).
New book: http://www.lymanschool.com
_


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