Writing to on-board I2C eeprom

I want to write some data into the on-board eeprom & have the following questions :

  1. Can I write to the eeprom by simply opening the file “/sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-0050/eeprom” ?

  2. Why is this file 32768 bytes in size (I would have expected it to be 4096 bytes). The contents of the file appears to be 8 contiguous copies of the 4K eeprom contents.

  3. If the answer to (1) is yes, can I open the file in read/write mode, seek to a position near the end and then write some data to it, or do I need to write the complete 4K ?

  4. Do I need to erase the chip before writing to it ?

I know that I will need to disable the write-protection by grounding TP4.

I’m running ubuntu on a rev C Element14 BBB.

As a matter of interest, I’ve noticed that the standard eeprom contents on an element14 manufactured BBB (Rev C) seems to have the wrong board type defined (00A5 instead of 00C0)

John