Solved What is /dev/efi device file?

[little_blue_daemon]

Title says it all; I was poking around the device files and noticed /dev/efi. None of the search results I've found even specifically mention /dev/efi. I'm just curious what purpose it serves.

command:

stat -f "maj/min: %Z type: %T" /dev/efi

result:

maj/min: 0,44    type:

File type shows up as a character device with other commands.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

iirc, it's for user access to efi services but I don't know how I remember that.

 

[_martin]

Comes from efidev(4). Depency of efibootmgr(8) to provide what drhowarddrfine mentioned.

 

[little_blue_daemon]

Thanks guys, I'm getting the idea now. I think if I were to look for how efibootmgr interacts with /dev/efi I'd probably get a better idea of what's going on.

From _martin:

Comes from efidev(4)

From efidev(4):

The efidev device provides user-mode access to UEFI runtime services. efidev also includes a driver to provide a time-of-day clock using the UEFI real time clock (RTC). However, the RTC may not always be available, based on the UEFI firmware.
...
FILES
/dev/efi

Actually, upon further reading, the efidev man page contains everything I wanted to know.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Comes from efidev(4). …

Thanks … I've been blindly using nextboot(8) for months, wondering whether it wrote to EFI, too lazy to consult a manual.

Today I found my answer and <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nextboot&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD#BUGS> had a giggle at the author's honesty

PS little_blue_daemon welcome to FreeBSD Forums.

 

[SirDice]

Today I found my answer and <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nextboot&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD#BUGS> had a giggle at the author's honesty

Not entirely correct anymore though, author speaks of Forth, which was used with the old loader(8). loader(8) switched to LUA some time ago. Not sure about the warning about writing to a non-checked filesystem though. That seems to refer to UFS only.