REPLACEMENT OF A CORRUPT DRIVER VARIABLE RECORD

• US 20150370653A1
• Filed: 01/31/2013
• Published: 12/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Scott, Jayne E.
• Granted Patent: US 9,710,340 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1469 Backup restoration techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2284 by power-on test, e.g. power-on self test [POST]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4411 Configuring for operating with peripheral devices; Loading of device drivers

Abstract

A BIOS storage device including driver variable records, a corruption detection engine and a corruption remediation engine, wherein the corruption detection engine is to evaluate a plurality of driver variable records stored in an area of a BIOS storage device for corruption, and a corruption remediation engine is to replace a corrupt driver variable record with a last known good version of the driver variable record.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a BIOS storage device including a plurality of driver variable records, a corruption detection engine, and a corruption remediation engine;

wherein the corruption detection engine is to evaluate the plurality of driver variable records stored in an area of a BIOS storage device for corruption; and

wherein the corruption remediation engine is to replace a corrupt driver variable record with a last known good version of the driver variable record.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the corruption detection engine is to determine that a driver variable record is corrupt based on bad information contained in a header of the driver variable record.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the corruption remediation engine is to replace the corrupt driver variable record with a default version of the driver variable record.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of driver variable records are stored in a linked-list.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the corruption remediation engine is to replace all driver variable records from the corrupt driver variable record to the end of the linked-list with a last known good version of each driver variable record.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein a component/function identification engine is to direct each component updating one of the driver variable records to identify themselves by including their name in the header of the driver variable record the component is updating.

7. A method, comprising:

evaluating, by a corruption detection engine, an area of a BIOS storage device for corrupt driver variable records that are stored in a linked-list; and

based on finding a corrupt driver variable record, replacing, by a corruption mediation engine, the corrupt driver variable record based on a last known good driver variable record available.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising replacing all driver variable records from the corrupt variable record to the end of the linked-list with a last known good driver variable record corresponding to each driver variable record being replaced.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising marking the corrupt driver variable record for deletion based on the last known good driver variable record being unavailable.

10. A non-transitory, computer-readable storage device (CRSD) containing software that, when executed, causes a processor to:

evaluate, by a corruption detection module, driver variable records stored in a region of a BIOS storage device for corruption, wherein the driver variable records are structured as a linked-list; and

based on a driver variable record being corrupt, replace, by a corruption remediation module, the corrupt driver variable record and subsequent driver variable records to the end of the linked-list with a last known good.

11. The CRSD of claim 10, wherein, when executed, the software causes the processor to evaluate the driver variable records for bad links.

12. The CRSD of claim 10, wherein, when executed, the software causes the processor to evaluate the driver variable records for bad header information.

13. The CRSD of claim 10, wherein, when executed, the software causes the processor to erase the entire region of the memory that stores the variable driver records based on there being a corrupt driver variable record that cannot be replaced.

14. The CRSD of claim 10, wherein the software is executed by the processor at pre-determined time intervals.

15. The CRSD of claim 10, wherein, when executed, the software causes the processor to evaluate the driver variable record for a bad name size of the driver variable record or by a bad data size of the driver variable record.