Summary: eeprom command on Sparcs

[Andrew Torda]

Original question was..

>On a 4/65 with OS 4.1, (eeprom rev 1.3) mine says
>    eeprom: /dev/eeprom: Error 0
>On a 4/490 server, it says,
>    eeprom: software area checksum wrong
>
>Furthermore, the manual entry lists eeprom variables which are not even
>really in the eeprom, e.g. memsize.
>
>Looking inside /usr/bin/eeprom with strings shows a bunch of strings which
>correspond to those in the manual entry, not those of the actual eeprom.
>
>Finally, it seems that the eeprom could also live in
>  /dev/openprom
>but
>  eeprom -f /dev/openprom
>says
>  eeprom: /dev/openprom: No such device
>
>Does this command work for anyone else ?

I had just over 20 replies.  /usr/bin/eeprom works on machines from 75% of
people (of this statistically insignificant sample).  It does not work on
other peoples machines. Reading the list, there is no obvious correlation
between model of Sparc, OS version and whether or not the command works.
Most amusing were the people who had a number of machines, with the eeprom
command working on some, but not others.

Of the people who said the command doesn't work, nobody knew why.  Of the
people who have a functioning /usr/bin/eeprom, the best suggestion was to
check the device.

Comparing my /dev/eeprom against the /dev listing mailed by someone, that
is not the problem (major, minor dev numbers, owner, group) The device is,
in fact, made under the group of std devices.  Furthermore, removing the
device and putting it back with appropriate mknod, chmod and chgrp
commands does not help.

A number of the people who have a functioning eeprom command suggested the
-i flag. This tells it to ignore the checksum errors. It does not help any
people for whom the command does not function at all. Some people pointed
towards the known eeprom bug on 4/4xx machines, but there were no real
comments on Sparcstations of any sort.

For me, the dysfunctional /usr/bin/eeprom remains a mystery.

-Andrew Torda