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EFIVAR(8) DragonFly System Manager's Manual EFIVAR(8)
NAME
efivar - UEFI environment variable interaction
SYNOPSIS
efivar [-abdDHlLNpRtuw] [-n name] [-f file] [--append] [--ascii]
[--attributes] [--binary] [--delete] [--device-path]
[--fromfile file] [--guid] [--hex] [--list-guids] [--list]
[--load-option] [--name name] [--no-name] [--print]
[--print-decimal] [--raw-guid] [--utf8] [--write]
DESCRIPTION
This program manages "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface" (UEFI)
environment variables. UEFI variables have three part: A namespace, a
name and a value. The namespace is a GUID that is self assigned by the
group defining the variables. The name is a Unicode name for the
variable. The value is binary data. All Unicode data is presented to
the user as UTF-8.
The following options are available:
-n name, --name name Specify the name of the variable to operate on.
The name argument is the GUID of the variable,
followed by a dash, followed by the UEFI variable
name. The GUID may be in numeric format, or may be
one of the well known symbolic name (see
--list-guids for a complete list).
-f file, --fromfile file
When writing or appending to a variable, take the
data for the variable's value from file instead of
from the command line. This flag implies --write
unless the --append or --print flags are given.
This behavior is not well understood and is
currently unimplemented for writes. When --print
is specified, the contents of the file are used as
the value to print using any other specified flags.
This is used primarily for testing purposes for
more complicated variable decoding.
-a, --append Append the specified value to the UEFI variable
rather than replacing it.
-t attr, --attributes attr
Specify, in hexadecimal, the attributes for this
variable. See section 7.2 (GetVariable subsection,
Related Definitions) of the UEFI Specification for
hex values to use.
-A, --ascii Display the variable data as modified ascii: All
printable characters are printed, while unprintable
characters are rendered as a two-digit hexadecimal
number preceded by a % character.
-b, --binary Display the variable data as binary data. Usually
will be used with the -N or --no-name flag. Useful
in scripts.
-D, --delete Delete the specified variable. May not be used
with either the --write or the --append flags. No
value may be specified.
-d, --device, --device-path
Interpret the variables printed as UEFI device
paths and print the UEFI standard string
representation.
-g, --guid If the flag is specified, guids are converted to
names if they are known (and show up in
--list-guids -).
-H, --hex List variable data as a hex dump.
-L, --list-guids Lists the well known GUIDs. The names listed here
may be used in place of the numeric GUID values.
These names will replace the numeric GUID values
unless --raw-guid flag is specified.
-l, --list List all the variables. If the --print flag is
also listed, their values will be displayed.
--load-option Decode the variable as if it were a UEFI Boot
Option, including information about what device
and/or paths the UEFI DevicePaths decode to.
-N, --no-name Do not display the variable name.
-p, --print Print the value of the variable.
-R, --raw-guid Do not substitute well known names for GUID numeric
values in output.
-u, --utf8 Treat the value of the variable as UCS2 and convert
it to UTF8 and print the result.
-w, --write Write (replace) the variable specified with the
value specified from standard input. No command
line option to do this is available since UEFI
variables are binary structures rather than
strings. echo(1) -n can be used to specify simple
strings.
name Display the name environment variable.
COMPATIBILITY
The efivar program is intended to be compatible (strict superset) with a
program of the same name included in the Red Hat libefivar package, but
the -d and --print-decimal flags are not implemented and never will be.
The -d flag is short for --device-path.
SEE ALSO
efivar(3), efidp(8)
Appendix A of the UEFI specification has the format for GUIDs. All GUIDs
("Globally Unique Identifiers") have the format described in RFC 4122.
HISTORY
The efivar utility first appeared in FreeBSD 11.1.
DragonFly 5.9-DEVELOPMENT June 6, 2020 DragonFly 5.9-DEVELOPMENT