In principle, name can be any string. In practice, not all strings will be accepted. Old world machines have a fixed set of Open Firmware variables. New World machines can create new varibles as desired. Some variables require adminstrator privilege to get or set.
The given value must match the data type required for name. Binary data can be set using the %xx notation, where xx is the hex value of the byte. The type for new variables is always binary data.
Two Open Firmware variables have special treatment on old world machines: boot-command and boot-args. As long as boot-command starts with "# bootr," the boot-args variable will be present. Getting or setting boot-args will get or set the boot-command while preserving the "# bootr". In most cases when setting boot arguments for the kernel, there is no need to test for old world and set boot-command. Instead set boot-args with the desired arguments.
Set the boot-args variable to "-s rd=*hd:10". This would specifiy single user mode with the root device in hard drive partition 10.
Create a new variable, my-variable, containging a list of two C-strings that is terminated by a NUL.