OPAL NVRAM

The NVRAM requirements for OPAL systems is derived from LoPAPR, and all requirements listed in it apply to OPAL with some exceptions. Note that Section 8.4.1.1.3 “OF Configuration Variables” does NOT apply to OPAL, neither does 8.4.1.2 “DASD Spin-up Control”. Not that the RTAS calls of nvram-fetch and nvram-store are roughly equivalent to the OPAL_READ_NVRAM and OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM calls.

LoPAPR has a minimum requirement of 8KB of Non-Volatile Memory. While this requirement carries over, it’s important to note that historically all OPAL systems have had roughly 500kb of NVRAM.

See nvram Device Tree Node for details on how NVRAM is represented in the device tree. It’s fairly simple, it looks like this:

nvram {
      compatible = "ibm,opal-nvram";
      #bytes = <0x90000>;
};

OPAL_READ_NVRAM

#define OPAL_READ_NVRAM                         7

int64_t opal_read_nvram(uint64_t buffer, uint64_t size, uint64_t offset);

OPAL_READ_NVRAM call requests OPAL to read the data from system NVRAM memory into a memory buffer. The data at offset from nvram_image will be copied to memory buffer of size size.

This is a synchronous OPAL call, as OPAL will typically read the content of NVRAM from its storage (typically flash) during boot, so the call duration should be along the lines of a memcpy() operation rather than reading from storage.

Parameters

uint64_t buffer
uint64_t size
uint64_t offset

buffer

the data from nvram will be copied to buffer

size

the data of size size will be copied

offset

the data will be copied from address equal to base nvram_image plus offset

Return Values

OPAL_SUCCESS

data from nvram to memory buffer copied successfully

OPAL_PARAMETER

a parameter offset or size was incorrect

OPAL_HARDWARE

either nvram is not initialized or permanent error related to nvram hardware.

OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM

#define OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM                        8

int64_t opal_write_nvram(uint64_t buffer, uint64_t size, uint64_t offset);

OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM call requests OPAL to write the data to actual system NVRAM memory from memory buffer at offset, of size size

Parameters

uint64_t buffer
uint64_t size
uint64_t offset

buffer

data from buffer will be copied to nvram

size

the data of size size will be copied

offset

the data will be copied to address which is equal to base nvram_image plus offset

Return Values

OPAL_SUCCESS

data from memory buffer to actual nvram_image copied successfully

OPAL_PARAMETER

a parameter offset or size was incorrect

OPAL_HARDWARE

either nvram is not initialized or permanent error related to nvram hardware.

OPAL_BUSY

OPAL is currently busy, retry the OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM call.

OPAL_BUSY_EVENT

OPAL is currently busy, call OPAL_POLL_EVENTS and then retry OPAL_WRITE_NVRAM