On 26.06.2010 15:30, Stuart Henderson wrote:
We already have a bios flasher in the ports tree (sysutils/dellflash). It requires special steps to be taken to use. Userland just does not and should not have this level of access to the system unless configuration changes are deliberately made. (In the case of dellflash, a kernel module handles access to the flash device which of course must be loaded before securelevel is raised).
AFAIK dellflash (well, at least the Linux equivalent) is special because it doesn't perform any flashing, it simply loads a BIOS image into contiguous physical memory and waits for the BIOS to do the flashing on reboot. Due to that, you need a kernel module, and the flashing happens outside any OS. flashrom doesn't trust/use the BIOS to flash, and it doesn't need a kernel module because it does the flashing itself, from userspace.
Regards, Carl-Daniel