.TH FLASHROM 8 "Jul 25, 2011" .SH NAME flashrom \- detect, read, write, verify and erase flash chips .SH SYNOPSIS .B flashrom \fR[\fB\-n\fR] [\fB\-V\fR] [\fB\-f\fR] [\fB\-h\fR|\fB\-R\fR|\ \fB\-L\fR|\fB\-z\fR|\fB\-E\fR|\fB\-r\fR |\fB\-w\fR |\ \fB\-v\fR ] [\fB\-c\fR ] [\fB\-m\fR [:]] \ [\fB\-l\fR ] [\fB\-i\fR ] [\fB\-p\fR [:]] .SH DESCRIPTION .B flashrom is a utility for detecting, reading, writing, verifying and erasing flash chips. It's often used to flash BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware images in-system using a supported mainboard. However, it also supports various external PCI/USB/parallel-port/serial-port based devices which can program flash chips, including some network cards (NICs), SATA/IDE controller cards, graphics cards, the Bus Pirate device, various FTDI FT2232/FT4232H based USB devices, and more. .PP It supports a wide range of DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32, TSOP40, TSOP48, and BGA chips, which use various protocols such as LPC, FWH, parallel flash, or SPI. .SH OPTIONS .B IMPORTANT: Please note that the command line interface for flashrom will change before flashrom 1.0. Do not use flashrom in scripts or other automated tools without checking that your flashrom version won't interpret options in a different way. .PP You can specify one of .BR \-h ", " \-R ", " \-L ", " \-z ", " \-E ", " \-r ", " \-w ", " \-v or no operation. If no operation is specified, flashrom will only probe for flash chips. It is recommended that if you try flashrom the first time on a system, you run it in probe-only mode and check the output. Also you are advised to make a backup of your current ROM contents with .B \-r before you try to write a new image. .TP .B "\-r, \-\-read " Read flash ROM contents and save them into the given .BR . If the file already exists, it will be overwritten. .TP .B "\-w, \-\-write " Write .B into flash ROM. This will first automatically .B erase the chip, then write to it. .sp In the process the chip is also read several times. First an in-memory backup is made for disaster recovery and to be able to skip regions that are already equal to the image file. This copy is updated along with the write operation. In case of erase errors it is even re-read completely. After writing has finished and if verification is enabled, the whole flash chip is read out and compared with the input image. .TP .B "\-n, \-\-noverify" Skip the automatic verification of flash ROM contents after writing. Using this option is .B not recommended, you should only use it if you know what you are doing and if you feel that the time for verification takes too long. .sp Typical usage is: .B "flashrom \-n \-w " .sp This option is only useful in combination with .BR \-\-write . .TP .B "\-v, \-\-verify " Verify the flash ROM contents against the given .BR . .TP .B "\-E, \-\-erase" Erase the flash ROM chip. .TP .B "\-V, \-\-verbose" More verbose output. This option can be supplied multiple times (max. 3 times, i.e. .BR \-VVV ) for even more debug output. .TP .B "\-c, \-\-chip" Probe only for the specified flash ROM chip. This option takes the chip name as printed by .B "flashrom \-L" without the vendor name as parameter. Please note that the chip name is case sensitive. .TP .B "\-m, \-\-mainboard" [:] Override mainboard settings. .sp flashrom reads the coreboot table to determine the current mainboard. If no coreboot table could be read or if you want to override these values, you can specify \-m, e.g.: .sp .B " flashrom \-\-mainboard AGAMI:ARUMA \-w agami_aruma.rom" .sp See the 'Known boards' or 'Known laptops' section in the output of 'flashrom \-L' for a list of boards which require the specification of the board name, if no coreboot table is found. .TP .B "\-f, \-\-force" Force one or more of the following actions: .sp * Force chip read and pretend the chip is there. .sp * Force chip access even if the chip is bigger than the maximum supported \ size for the flash bus. .sp * Force erase even if erase is known bad. .sp * Force write even if write is known bad. .TP .B "\-l, \-\-layout " Read ROM layout from .BR . .sp flashrom supports ROM layouts. This allows you to flash certain parts of the flash chip only. A ROM layout file looks like follows: .sp 00000000:00008fff gfxrom 00009000:0003ffff normal 00040000:0007ffff fallback .sp i.e.: startaddr:endaddr name .sp All addresses are offsets within the file, not absolute addresses! If you only want to update the normal image in a ROM you can say: .sp .B " flashrom \-\-layout rom.layout \-\-image normal \-w agami_aruma.rom" .sp To update normal and fallback but leave the VGA BIOS alone, say: .sp .B " flashrom \-l rom.layout \-i normal \" .br .B " \-i fallback \-w agami_aruma.rom" .sp Currently overlapping sections are not supported. .TP .B "\-i, \-\-image " Only flash image .B from flash layout. .TP .B "\-L, \-\-list\-supported" List the flash chips, chipsets, mainboards, and external programmers (including PCI, USB, parallel port, and serial port based devices) supported by flashrom. .sp There are many unlisted boards which will work out of the box, without special support in flashrom. Please let us know if you can verify that other boards work or do not work out of the box. .sp .B IMPORTANT: For verification you have to test an ERASE and/or WRITE operation, so make sure you only do that if you have proper means to recover from failure! .TP .B "\-z, \-\-list\-supported-wiki" Same as .BR \-\-list\-supported , but outputs the supported hardware in MediaWiki syntax, so that it can be easily pasted into the wiki page at .BR http://www.flashrom.org/ . Please note that MediaWiki output is not compiled in by default. .TP .B "\-p, \-\-programmer [:parameter[,parameter[,parameter]]]" Specify the programmer device. Currently supported are: .sp .BR "* internal" " (default, for in-system flashing in the mainboard)" .sp .BR "* dummy" " (virtual programmer for testing flashrom)" .sp .BR "* nic3com" " (for flash ROMs on 3COM network cards)" .sp .BR "* nicrealtek" " (for flash ROMs on Realtek network cards)" .sp .BR "* nicsmc1211" " (for flash ROMs on RTL8139-compatible SMC2 network cards)" .sp .BR "* nicnatsemi" " (for flash ROMs on National Semiconductor DP838* network \ cards)" .sp .BR "* nicintel" " (for parallel flash ROMs on Intel 10/100Mbit network cards) .sp .BR "* gfxnvidia" " (for flash ROMs on NVIDIA graphics cards)" .sp .BR "* drkaiser" " (for flash ROMs on Dr. Kaiser PC-Waechter PCI cards)" .sp .BR "* satasii" " (for flash ROMs on Silicon Image SATA/IDE controllers)" .sp .BR "* satamv" " (for flash ROMs on Marvell SATA controllers)" .sp .BR "* atahpt" " (for flash ROMs on Highpoint ATA/RAID controllers)" .sp .BR "* ft2232_spi" " (for SPI flash ROMs attached to an FT2232/FT4232H family \ based USB SPI programmer), including the DLP Design DLP-USB1232H, \ FTDI FT2232H Mini-Module, FTDI FT4232H Mini-Module, openbiosprog-spi, Amontec \ JTAGkey/JTAGkey-tiny/JTAGkey-2, Dangerous Prototypes Bus Blaster, \ Olimex ARM-USB-TINY/-H, and Olimex ARM-USB-OCD/-H." .sp .BR "* serprog" " (for flash ROMs attached to a programmer speaking serprog), \ including AVR flasher by Urja Rannikko, AVR flasher by eightdot, \ Arduino Mega flasher by fritz, InSystemFlasher by Juhana Helovuo, and \ atmegaXXu2-flasher by Stefan Tauner." .sp .BR "* buspirate_spi" " (for SPI flash ROMs attached to a Bus Pirate)" .sp .BR "* dediprog" " (for SPI flash ROMs attached to a Dediprog SF100)" .sp .BR "* rayer_spi" " (for SPI flash ROMs attached to a RayeR parport " or Xilinx DLC5 compatible cable) .sp .BR "* nicintel_spi" " (for SPI flash ROMs on Intel Gigabit network cards)" .sp .BR "* ogp_spi" " (for SPI flash ROMs on Open Graphics Project graphics card)" .sp Some programmers have optional or mandatory parameters which are described in detail in the .B PROGRAMMER SPECIFIC INFO section. Support for some programmers can be disabled at compile time. .B "flashrom \-h" lists all supported programmers. .TP .B "\-h, \-\-help" Show a help text and exit. .TP .B "\-R, \-\-version" Show version information and exit. .SH PROGRAMMER SPECIFIC INFO Some programmer drivers accept further parameters to set programmer-specific parameters. These parameters are separated from the programmer name by a colon. While some programmers take arguments at fixed positions, other programmers use a key/value interface in which the key and value is separated by an equal sign and different pairs are separated by a comma or a colon. .TP .BR "internal " programmer Some mainboards require to run mainboard specific code to enable flash erase and write support (and probe support on old systems with parallel flash). The mainboard brand and model (if it requires specific code) is usually autodetected using one of the following mechanisms: If your system is running coreboot, the mainboard type is determined from the coreboot table. Otherwise, the mainboard is detected by examining the onboard PCI devices and possibly DMI info. If PCI and DMI do not contain information to uniquely identify the mainboard (which is the exception), it might be necessary to specify the mainboard using the .B \-m switch (see above). .sp Some of these board-specific flash enabling functions (called .BR "board enables" ) in flashrom have not yet been tested. If your mainboard is detected needing an untested board enable function, a warning message is printed and the board enable is not executed, because a wrong board enable function might cause the system to behave erratically, as board enable functions touch the low-level internals of a mainboard. Not executing a board enable function (if one is needed) might cause detection or erasing failure. If your board protects only part of the flash (commonly the top end, called boot block), flashrom might encounter an error only after erasing the unprotected part, so running without the board-enable function might be dangerous for erase and write (which includes erase). .sp The suggested procedure for a mainboard with untested board specific code is to first try to probe the ROM (just invoke flashrom and check that it detects your flash chip type) without running the board enable code (i.e. without any parameters). If it finds your chip, fine. Otherwise, retry probing your chip with the board-enable code running, using .sp .B " flashrom \-p internal:boardenable=force" .sp If your chip is still not detected, the board enable code seems to be broken or the flash chip unsupported. Otherwise, make a backup of your current ROM contents (using .BR \-r ) and store it to a medium outside of your computer, like a USB drive or a network share. If you needed to run the board enable code already for probing, use it for reading too. Now you can try to write the new image. You should enable the board enable code in any case now, as it has been written because it is known that writing/erasing without the board enable is going to fail. In any case (success or failure), please report to the flashrom mailing list, see below. .sp On systems running coreboot, flashrom checks whether the desired image matches your mainboard. This needs some special board ID to be present in the image. If flashrom detects that the image you want to write and the current board do not match, it will refuse to write the image unless you specify .sp .B " flashrom \-p internal:boardmismatch=force" .sp If your mainboard uses an ITE IT87 series Super I/O for LPC<->SPI flash bus translation, flashrom should autodetect that configuration. If you want to set the I/O base port of the IT87 series SPI controller manually instead of using the value provided by the BIOS, use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p internal:it87spiport=portnum" .sp syntax where .B portnum is the I/O port number (must be a multiple of 8). In the unlikely case flashrom doesn't detect an active IT87 LPC<->SPI bridge, please send a bug report so we can diagnose the problem. .sp If you have an Intel chipset with an ICH6 or later southbridge and if you want to set specific IDSEL values for a non-default flash chip or an embedded controller (EC), you can use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p internal:fwh_idsel=value" .sp syntax where value is the 48-bit hexadecimal raw value to be written in the IDSEL registers of the Intel southbridge. The upper 32 bits use one hex digit each per 512 kB range between 0xffc00000 and 0xffffffff, and the lower 16 bits use one hex digit each per 1024 kB range between 0xff400000 and 0xff7fffff. The rightmost hex digit corresponds with the lowest address range. All address ranges have a corresponding sister range 4 MB below with identical IDSEL settings. The default value for ICH7 is given in the example below. .sp Example: .B "flashrom \-p internal:fwh_idsel=0x001122334567" .sp Using flashrom on laptops is dangerous and may easily make your hardware unusable (see also the .B BUGS section). The embedded controller (EC) in these machines often interacts badly with flashing. .B http://www.flashrom.org/Laptops has more information. If flash is shared with the EC, erase is guaranteed to brick your laptop and write is very likely to brick your laptop. Chip read and probe may irritate your EC and cause fan failure, backlight failure, sudden poweroff, and other nasty effects. flashrom will attempt to detect laptops and abort immediately for safety reasons. If you want to proceed anyway at your own risk, use .sp .B " flashrom \-p internal:laptop=force_I_want_a_brick" .sp You have been warned. .sp We will not help you if you force flashing on a laptop because this is a really dumb idea. .TP .BR "dummy " programmer The dummy programmer operates on a buffer in memory only. It provides a safe and fast way to test various aspects of flashrom and is mainly used in development and while debugging. .sp It is able to emulate some chips to a certain degree (basic identify/read/erase/write operations work). .sp An optional parameter specifies the bus types it should support. For that you have to use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p dummy:bus=[type[+type[+type]]]" .sp syntax where .B type can be .BR parallel ", " lpc ", " fwh ", " spi in any order. If you specify bus without type, all buses will be disabled. If you do not specify bus, all buses will be enabled. .sp Example: .B "flashrom \-p dummy:bus=lpc+fwh" .sp The dummy programmer supports flash chip emulation for automated self-tests without hardware access. If you want to emulate a flash chip, use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p dummy:emulate=chip" .sp syntax where .B chip is one of the following chips (please specify only the chip name, not the vendor): .sp .RB "* ST " M25P10.RES " SPI flash chip (RES, page write)" .sp .RB "* SST " SST25VF040.REMS " SPI flash chip (REMS, byte write)" .sp .RB "* SST " SST25VF032B " SPI flash chip (RDID, AAI write)" .sp Example: .B "flashrom -p dummy:emulate=SST25VF040.REMS" .sp If you use flash chip emulation, flash image persistence is available as well by using the .sp .B " flashrom \-p dummy:emulate=chip,image=image.rom" .sp syntax where .B image.rom is the file where the simulated chip contents are read on flashrom startup and where the chip contents on flashrom shutdown are written to. .sp Example: .B "flashrom -p dummy:emulate=M25P10.RES,image=dummy.bin" .sp If you use SPI flash chip emulation for a chip which supports SPI page write with the default opcode, you can set the maximum allowed write chunk size with the .sp .B " flashrom \-p dummy:emulate=chip,spi_write_256_chunksize=size" .sp syntax where .B size is the number of bytes (min. 1, max. 256). .sp Example: .sp .B " flashrom -p dummy:emulate=M25P10.RES,spi_write_256_chunksize=5" .TP .BR "nic3com" , " nicrealtek" , " nicsmc1211" , " nicnatsemi" , " nicintel\ " , " nicintel_spi" , " gfxnvidia" , " ogp_spi" , " drkaiser" , " satasii\ " , " satamv" ", and " atahpt " programmers These programmers have an option to specify the PCI address of the card your want to use, which must be specified if more than one card supported by the selected programmer is installed in your system. The syntax is .sp .BR " flashrom \-p xxxx:pci=bb:dd.f" , .sp where .B xxxx is the name of the programmer .B bb is the PCI bus number, .B dd is the PCI device number, and .B f is the PCI function number of the desired device. .sp Example: .B "flashrom \-p nic3com:pci=05:04.0" .TP .BR "ft2232_spi " programmer An optional parameter specifies the controller type and interface/port it should support. For that you have to use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p ft2232_spi:type=model,port=interface" .sp syntax where .B model can be .BR 2232H ", " 4232H ", " jtagkey ", " busblaster ", " openmoko ", " \ arm-usb-tiny ", " arm-usb-tiny-h ", " arm-usb-ocd " or " arm-usb-ocd-h and .B interface can be .BR A ", or " B . The default model is .B 4232H and the default interface is .BR B . .TP .BR "serprog " programmer A mandatory parameter specifies either a serial device/baud combination or an IP/port combination for communication with the programmer. In the device/baud combination, the device has to start with a slash. For serial, you have to use the .sp .B " flashrom \-p serprog:dev=/dev/device:baud" .sp syntax and for IP, you have to use .sp .B " flashrom \-p serprog:ip=ipaddr:port" .sp instead. More information about serprog is available in .B serprog-protocol.txt in the source distribution. .TP .BR "buspirate_spi " programmer A required .B dev parameter specifies the Bus Pirate device node and an optional .B spispeed parameter specifies the frequency of the SPI bus. The parameter delimiter is a comma. Syntax is .sp .B " flashrom \-p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/device,spispeed=frequency" .sp where .B frequency can be .BR 30k ", " 125k ", " 250k ", " 1M ", " 2M ", " 2.6M ", " 4M " or " 8M (in Hz). The default is the maximum frequency of 8 MHz. .TP .BR "dediprog " programmer An optional .B voltage parameter specifies the voltage the Dediprog should use. The default unit is Volt if no unit is specified. You can use .BR mV ", " milliVolt ", " V " or " Volt as unit specifier. Syntax is .sp .B " flashrom \-p dediprog:voltage=value" .sp where .B value can be .BR 0V ", " 1.8V ", " 2.5V ", " 3.5V or the equivalent in mV. .TP .BR "rayer_spi " programmer The default I/O base address used for the parallel port is 0x378 and you can use the optional .B iobase parameter to specify an alternate base I/O address with the .sp .B " flashrom \-p rayer_spi:iobase=baseaddr" .sp syntax where .B baseaddr is base I/O port address of the parallel port, which must be a multiple of four. Make sure to not forget the "0x" prefix for hexadecimal port addresses. .sp The default cable type is the RayeR cable. You can use the optional .B type parameter to specify the cable type with the .sp .B " flashrom \-p rayer_spi:type=model" .sp syntax where .B model can be .BR rayer " for the RayeR cable or " xilinx " for the Xilinx Parallel Cable III (DLC 5). .sp More information about the RayeR hardware is available at .BR "http://rayer.ic.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm " . The schematic of the Xilinx DLC 5 was published at .BR "http://www.xilinx.com/itp/xilinx4/data/docs/pac/appendixb.html " . .TP .BR "ogp_spi " programmer The flash ROM chip to access must be specified with the .B rom parameter. .sp .B " flashrom \-p ogp_spi:rom=name" .sp Where .B name is either .B cprom or .B s3 for the configuration ROM and .B bprom or .B bios for the BIOS ROM. If more than one card supported by the ogp_spi programmer is installed in your system, you have to specify the PCI address of the card you want to use with the .B pci= parameter as explained in the .B nic3com section above. .sp More information about the hardware is available at .BR http://wiki.opengraphics.org . .SH EXIT STATUS flashrom exits with 0 on success, 1 on most failures but with 2 if /dev/mem (/dev/xsvc on Solaris) can not be opened and with 3 if a call to mmap() fails. .SH REQUIREMENTS flashrom needs different access permissions for different programmers. .sp .B internal needs raw memory access, PCI configuration space access, raw I/O port access (x86) and MSR access (x86). .sp .BR nic3com ", " nicrealtek ", " nicsmc1211 " and " nicnatsemi " need PCI configuration space read access and raw I/O port access. .sp .B atahpt needs PCI configuration space access and raw I/O port access. .sp .BR gfxnvidia " and " drkaiser need PCI configuration space access and raw memory access. .sp .B rayer_spi needs raw I/O port access. .sp .B satasii needs PCI configuration space read access and raw memory access. .sp .B satamv needs PCI configuration space read access, raw I/O port access and raw memory access. .sp .B serprog needs TCP access to the network or userspace access to a serial port. .sp .B buspirate_spi needs userspace access to a serial port. .sp .BR dediprog " and " ft2232_spi need access to the USB device via libusb. .sp .B dummy needs no access permissions at all. .sp .BR internal ", " nic3com ", " nicrealtek ", " nicsmc1211 ", " nicnatsemi ", " .BR gfxnvidia ", " drkaiser ", " satasii ", " satamv " and " atahpt have to be run as superuser/root, and need additional raw access permission. .sp .BR serprog ", " buspirate_spi ", " dediprog " and " ft2232_spi can be run as normal user on most operating systems if appropriate device permissions are set. .sp .B ogp needs PCI configuration space read access and raw memory access. .sp On OpenBSD, you can obtain raw access permission by setting .B "securelevel=-1" in .B "/etc/rc.securelevel" and rebooting, or rebooting into single user mode. .SH BUGS Please report any bugs at .sp .B " http://www.flashrom.org/trac/flashrom/newticket" .sp or on the flashrom mailing list at .B "" .sp We recommend to subscribe first at .sp .B " http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom" .sp Using flashrom on laptops is dangerous and may easily make your hardware unusable unless you can desolder the flash chip and have a full flash chip backup. This is caused by the embedded controller (EC) present in many laptops, which interacts badly with any flash attempts. This is a hardware limitation and flashrom will attempt to detect it and abort immediately for safety reasons. .sp More information about flashrom on laptops is available from .sp .B " http://www.flashrom.org/Laptops" .SH LICENSE .B flashrom is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2. Some files are additionally available under the GPL (version 2, or any later version). .SH COPYRIGHT .br Please see the individual files. .SH AUTHORS Andrew Morgan .br Carl-Daniel Hailfinger .br Claus Gindhart .br David Borg .br David Hendricks .br Dominik Geyer .br Eric Biederman .br Giampiero Giancipoli .br Helge Wagner .br Idwer Vollering .br Joe Bao .br Joerg Fischer .br Joshua Roys .br Luc Verhaegen .br Li-Ta Lo .br Mark Marshall .br Markus Boas .br Mattias Mattsson .br Michael Karcher .br Nikolay Petukhov .br Patrick Georgi .br Peter Lemenkov .br Peter Stuge .br Reinder E.N. de Haan .br Ronald G. Minnich .br Ronald Hoogenboom .br Sean Nelson .br Stefan Reinauer .br Stefan Tauner .br Stefan Wildemann .br Stephan Guilloux .br Steven James .br Uwe Hermann .br Wang Qingpei .br Yinghai Lu .br some others, please see the flashrom svn changelog for details. .br All authors can be reached via email at . .PP This manual page was written by Uwe Hermann , Carl-Daniel Hailfinger and others. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (version 2 or later).