Replacement of a corrupt driver variable record

• US 9,710,340 B2
• Filed: 01/31/2013
• Issued: 07/18/2017
• 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.
• Primary Examiner(s): Ehne, Charles
• Application Number:
  US14/764,769
• Publication Number:
  US 20150370653A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,629 Days
• 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, 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; and

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

2. 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.

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

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the corruption remediation engine is to replace each driver variable record from the corrupt driver variable record to the end of the linked-list with a last known good version of each driver variable record being replaced.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a driver executable in the system to update data in a driver variable record of the plurality of driver variable records.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein each driver variable record of the plurality of driver variable records comprises a header and a data part to store data.

7. 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,

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

component/function identification instructions executable in the system to direct a component updating a given driver variable record of the plurality of driver variable records to identify the component by including the component'"'"'s name in a header of the given driver variable record the component is updating.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein each driver variable record of the plurality of driver variable records comprises a header and a data part to store data.

9. A method, comprising:

updating, by a driver executing in a system comprising a processor, data in a first driver variable record, the first driver variable record including a header and a data part storing the data;

evaluating, by a corruption detection engine in the system, an area of a BIOS storage device for a corrupt driver variable record that is stored in a linked-list of driver variable records including the first driver variable record; and

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

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising replacing each driver variable record from the corrupt driver 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.

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

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the corrupt driver variable record is detected by detecting bad header information in the corrupt driver variable record.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device (CRSD) containing instructions that, when executed, cause a system to:

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

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

14. The CRSD of claim 13, wherein the instructions when executed cause the system to evaluate the driver variable records for bad links.

15. The CRSD of claim 13, wherein the instructions when executed cause the system to erase the entire region of a memory that stores the variable driver records based on there being a corrupt driver variable record that cannot be replaced.

16. The CRSD of claim 13, wherein the instructions are executed by the system at pre-determined time intervals.

17. The CRSD of claim 13, wherein the instructions when executed cause the system to evaluate the driver variable record for a bad name size of the driver variable record or a bad data size of the driver variable record.