biosconfig Requirements

  • You must run biosconfig as root because it needs to use drivers that are in read- and write-protected physical address space.

  • Close all other applications and quiesce your system before running biosconfig.

  • Linux versions of biosconfig depend on access to /dev/nvram to guarantee serialized access to the CMOS.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 distributions do not include the device by default. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions do include the device by default.

    To use /dev/nvram, the driver needs to be compiled into the kernel (or loaded as a module), and /dev/nvram must exist (root can create it using mknod /dev/nvram c 10 144).