UEFI Shell: Profiles

Last time, I discussed how the UEFI Shell can come in four basic flavors, called support levels. Level 0 was the most basic, supporting almost all of the API, but none of the scripting language and no user interface. Level 1 added basic scripting. Level 2 added file manipulation scripting. Level 3 added user-interface related scripting. Ok. So now we have a robust shell. But it can't do very much. In a manufacturing environment, it is important that software developers, including those who write provisioning and management scripts for systems, be able to depend on other types of commands, such as those which connect to the network stack or those which provide debug capabilities. If my script depends on these commands being present, how can I detect or even automatically correct such a situation? Enter Shell Command Profiles. A Shell Command Profile is a group of related commands that have a name. Names are made up of numbers, letters and the underscore ('_') character. Profile names that start with a '_' are reserved for usage by 3rd parties. Profile names that start with a letter or number are reserved for use by the UEFI Shell specification. The names of all profiles are stored in the environment variable "profiles" and are separated by the semicolon (';') character. This environment variable is initialized based on (a) the profiles that are built into the shell executable itself and (b) a file named "profiles.txt" that exists in the same directory as the shell executable. A script can determine which profiles are installed by searching this environment variable for the name of a specific profile. For example: if not Profile("Network1") then echo Required script command profile "Network1" not found. exit /b 1 endif The Profile() operator searches the "profiles" environment variable for the one specified and returns 1 if it is found or o if it is not. The UEFI 2.0 Shell Specification supports four standard profiles:

• Driver1. Standard set of driver-related commands. This includes connect, devices, devtree, dh, disconnect, drivers, drvcfg, drvdiag, reconnect and unload.
• Debug1. Standard set of debug commands. This includes the following commands: bcfg, comp, dblk, dmem, dmpstore, edit, eficompress, efidecompress, guid, hexedit, loadpcirom, mem, memmap,mm, mode, pci, sermod, setsize and smbiosview.
• Network1. Standard set of networking-related commands. This includes ifconfig, ipconfig, and ping.
• Install1. Standard set of commands to aid installation. This includes only bcfg.

Shell profiles provide an extensible method for creating standard groups of commands that can be relied up by 3rd party applications. Next Time: The UEFI Shell API.