[Novalug] Accessing BIOS

Jon LaBadie novalugml@jgcomp.com
Fri Dec 18 22:56:26 EST 2009


On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 07:55:55PM -0500, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
> 
> As to utility of Linux shell applications.
> 
...
> 
> Of course there is the useful Linux command "apropos" which does suggest 
> commands that may apply to the topic one is wondering about.
> 
> It does not bring up dmidecode however when it is run:
> 
> ~$>apropos bios
> BIO_pop (3ssl)       - add and remove BIOs from a chain.
> BIO_push (3ssl)      - add and remove BIOs from a chain.
> BIO_set_accept_bios (3ssl) - accept BIO
> biosdecode (8)       - BIOS information decoder
> edd_id (8)           - udev callout to identify BIOS disk drives via EDD
> lmhosts (5)          - The Samba NetBIOS hosts file
> nmblookup (1)        - NetBIOS over TCP/IP client used to lookup NetBIOS names
> nmblookup.samba3 (1) - NetBIOS over TCP/IP client used to lookup NetBIOS  names
> toshset (1)          - manipulate bios and hardware settings of Toshiba laptops
> vbetool (1)          - run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware state
> 
> but
>
> $sudo apropos dmi
> CPAN::Admin (3pm)    - A CPAN Shell for CPAN admins
> arecordmidi (1)      - record Standard MIDI Files
> dmidecode (8)        - DMI table decoder
> getent (1)           - get entries from administrative database
> gpasswd (1)          - administer the /etc/group and /etc/gshadow files
> HTML::Mason::Admin (3pm) - Mason Administrator's Manual
> intro (8)            - Introduction to administration and privileged commands
> ip6tables (8)        - IPv6 packet filter administration
...

apropos(1), and the -k option of man(1) use the same index to output similar
(??identical??) information.  On UNIX this index is a file called windex,
created by catman(1M), in each man directory.  On Linux this seems to be a
single index file, /var/cache/man/whatis, created by the makewhatis(8) command.
Obviously, this index is also used by the whatis(1) command. :)

Each of these indexes is created from the "NAME" entry in the manpages.
For example,

    NAME
           dmidecode - DMI table decoder

Based on this, apropos and "man -k" would only list dmidecode for three possible
search strings, "decoder", "table", and "dmi".  Of course two of the strings are
sub-strings of the command name and "bios" is not in the "NAME" entry.  Neither
of which help the person looking for the command.


Fedora's makewhatis seems to go a little further as some of the index entries
are labelled (rpm) rather than with the section number (1-8).  I guess it pulls
out descriptions from the rpm database.  On my system, this is different than
the manpage and does include "bios".

$ man -k bios
BIO_pop []               (3)  - add and remove BIOs from a chain
BIO_push []              (3)  - add and remove BIOs from a chain
BIO_set_accept_bios []   (3)  - accept BIO
biosdecode []            (8)  - BIOS information decoder
dmidecode               (rpm) - Tool to analyse BIOS DMI data.
edd_id []                (8)  - udev callout to identify BIOS disk drives via EDD
  [snip]

The whatis database has two dmidecode entries

$ whatis dmidecode
dmidecode           (rpm) - Tool to analyse BIOS DMI data.
dmidecode []         (8)  - DMI table decoder

The databases should be updated daily or weekly by cron entries.

jl
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon@jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
 12027 Creekbend Drive		(703) 787-0884
 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)



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