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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2020-03-30 12:45:23 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2020-03-30 12:45:23 -0700
commit481ed297d900af0ce395f6ca8975903b76a5a59e (patch)
treee3862e9993cd8e2245c5a6d632f45dd3f77d1d62 /Documentation/filesystems/efivarfs.rst
parente59cd88028dbd41472453e5883f78330aa73c56e (diff)
parentabcb1e021ae5a36374c635eeaba5cec733169b78 (diff)
Merge tag 'docs-5.7' of git://git.lwn.net/linux
Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet: "This has been a busy cycle for documentation work. Highlights include: - Lots of RST conversion work by Mauro, Daniel ALmeida, and others. Maybe someday we'll get to the end of this stuff...maybe... - Some organizational work to bring some order to the core-api manual. - Various new docs and additions to the existing documentation. - Typo fixes, warning fixes, ..." * tag 'docs-5.7' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (123 commits) Documentation: x86: exception-tables: document CONFIG_BUILDTIME_TABLE_SORT MAINTAINERS: adjust to filesystem doc ReST conversion docs: deprecated.rst: Add BUG()-family doc: zh_CN: add translation for virtiofs doc: zh_CN: index files in filesystems subdirectory docs: locking: Drop :c:func: throughout docs: locking: Add 'need' to hardirq section docs: conf.py: avoid thousands of duplicate label warning on Sphinx docs: prevent warnings due to autosectionlabel docs: fix reference to core-api/namespaces.rst docs: fix pointers to io-mapping.rst and io_ordering.rst files Documentation: Better document the softlockup_panic sysctl docs: hw-vuln: tsx_async_abort.rst: get rid of an unused ref docs: perf: imx-ddr.rst: get rid of a warning docs: filesystems: fuse.rst: supress a Sphinx warning docs: translations: it: avoid duplicate refs at programming-language.rst docs: driver.rst: supress two ReSt warnings docs: trace: events.rst: convert some new stuff to ReST format Documentation: Add io_ordering.rst to driver-api manual Documentation: Add io-mapping.rst to driver-api manual ...
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=======================================
+efivarfs - a (U)EFI variable filesystem
+=======================================
+
+The efivarfs filesystem was created to address the shortcomings of
+using entries in sysfs to maintain EFI variables. The old sysfs EFI
+variables code only supported variables of up to 1024 bytes. This
+limitation existed in version 0.99 of the EFI specification, but was
+removed before any full releases. Since variables can now be larger
+than a single page, sysfs isn't the best interface for this.
+
+Variables can be created, deleted and modified with the efivarfs
+filesystem.
+
+efivarfs is typically mounted like this::
+
+ mount -t efivarfs none /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
+
+Due to the presence of numerous firmware bugs where removing non-standard
+UEFI variables causes the system firmware to fail to POST, efivarfs
+files that are not well-known standardized variables are created
+as immutable files. This doesn't prevent removal - "chattr -i" will work -
+but it does prevent this kind of failure from being accomplished
+accidentally.