BIOSTEST(8)

NAME
biostest.sh - starts the linux firmwarekit which checks the BIOS for linux compatiblity

SYNOPSIS
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 windows 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 languages 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 mailinglist 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.

AUTHOR
linuxfirmwarekit has been written by Intel and is published under the GPL and LGPL (see below link for details).

This manpage has been written by Thomas Renninger <trenn@suse.de>

SEE ALSO
http://www.linuxfirmwarekit.org

If you find bugs, please report them against the bugtracking system: http://bughost.org/firmwarekit/