.TH FLASHROM 8 "May 21, 2009" .SH NAME flashrom \- detect, read, write, verify and erase flash chips .SH SYNOPSIS .B flashrom \fR[\fB\-VfLzhRn\fR] [\fB\-E\fR|\fB\-r\fR file|\fB\-w\fR file|\fB\-v\fR file] [\fB\-c\fR chipname] [\fB\-m\fR [vendor:]part] [\fB\-l\fR file] [\fB\-i\fR image] [\fB\-p\fR programmer] .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, but it also supports flashing of network cards (NICs), SATA controller cards, and other external devices which can program flash chips. .PP It supports a wide range of DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32, and TSOP40 chips, which use various protocols such as LPC, FWH, parallel flash, or SPI. .SH OPTIONS 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 \-E, \-r, \-w, \-v or no operation. If no operation is specified, then all that happens is that flash info is dumped and the flash chip is set to writable. 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 \-r before you try to write a new image. .TP .B "\-r, \-\-read " Read flash ROM contents and save them into the given .BR . .TP .B "\-w, \-\-write " Write file into flash ROM. .TP .B "\-n, \-\-noverify" Do .B not verify the flash ROM contents after writing them to the chip. Using this option is .B not recommended, you should only use it if you know what you are doing and you feel that the time for verification takes too long. .sp Typical usage is: .B "flashrom -wn file" .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. .TP .B "\-c, \-\-chip" Probe only for specified flash ROM chip. .TP .B "\-m, \-\-mainboard" <[vendor:]part> 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 -w --mainboard AGAMI:ARUMA agami_aruma.rom" .sp See the 'Supported mainboards' 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 write without checking whether the ROM image file is really meant to be used on this board. .sp Note: This check only works while coreboot is running, and only for those boards where the coreboot code supports it. .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 -w --layout rom.layout --image normal agami_aruma.rom" .sp To update normal and fallback but leave the VGA BIOS alone, say: .sp .B " flashrom -w -l rom.layout -i normal \" .br .B " -i fallback agami_aruma.rom" .sp Currently overlapping sections are not supported. .sp ROM layouts should replace the \-s and \-e option since they are more flexible and they should lead to a ROM update file format with the ROM layout and the ROM image in one file (cpio, zip or something?). .TP .B "\-i, \-\-image " Only flash image .B from flash layout. .TP .B "\-L, \-\-list\-supported" List the flash chips, chipsets, mainboards, and PCI card "programmers" 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. 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 http://www.flashrom.org/. .TP .B "\-p, \-\-programmer [:parameters]" Specify the programmer device. Currently supported are: .sp .BR "* internal" " (default, for in-system flashing in the mainboard)" .sp .BR "* dummy" " (just prints all operations and accesses)" .sp .BR "* nic3com" " (for flash ROMs on 3COM 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 "* atahpt" " (for flash ROMs on Highpoint ATA/RAID controllers)" .sp .BR "* it87spi" " (for flash ROMs behind an ITE IT87xx Super I/O LPC/SPI translation unit)" .sp .BR "* ft2232spi" " (for flash ROMs attached to a FT2232H/FT4232H based USB SPI programmer)" .sp .BR "* serprog" " (for flash ROMs attached to Urja's AVR programmer)" .sp .BR "* buspiratespi" " (for flash ROMs attached to a Bus Pirate)" .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 seperated 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 \-m switch (see above). .sp Some of these board-specific flash enabling functions (called 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 \-r) and store it to a medium outside of your computer, like an 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 .BR "dummy " programmer An optional parameter specifies the bus types it should support. For that you have to use the .B "flashrom -p dummy:type" syntax where .B type can be any comma-separated combination of .B parallel lpc fwh spi all in any order. .sp Example: .B "flashrom -p dummy:lpc,fwh" .TP .BR "nic3com" , " gfxnvidia" , " satasii" 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 .B "flashrom -p xxxx:bb:dd.f" , 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 NIC. .sp Example: .B "flashrom -p nic3com:05:04.0" .TP .BR "it87spi " programmer An optional parameter sets the I/O base port of the IT87* SPI controller interface to the port specified in the parameter instead of using the port address set by the BIOS. For that you have to use the .B "flashrom -p it87spi:port=portnum" syntax where .B portnum is an I/O port number which must be a multiple of 8. .TP .BR "ft2232spi " programmer An optional parameter species the controller type and interface/port it should support. For that you have to use the .B "flashrom -p ft2232spi:model,port=interface" syntax where .B model can be any of .B 2232H 4232H and .B interface can be any of .BR "A 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 .B "flashrom -p serprog:/dev/device:baud" syntax and for IP, you have to use .B "flashrom -p serprog:ip:port" instead. More information about serprog is available in serprog-protocol.txt in the source distribution. .TP .BR "buspiratespi " programmer A required dev parameter specifyies the Bus Pirate device node and an optional spispeed parameter specifyies the frequency of the SPI bus. The parameter delimiter is a comma. Syntax is .sp .B "flashrom -p buspiratespi:dev=/dev/device,spispeed=frequency" .sp where .B frequency can be any of .B 30k 125k 250k 1M 2M 2.6M 4M 8M (in Hz). The default is the maximum frequency of 8 MHz. .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 BUGS Please report any bugs at .BR http://www.flashrom.org/trac/flashrom/newticket "," or on the flashrom mailing list .RB "(" http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom ")." .SH LICENCE .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 Carl-Daniel Hailfinger .br Claus Gindhart .br Dominik Geyer .br Eric Biederman .br Giampiero Giancipoli .br Joe Bao .br Luc Verhaegen .br Li-Ta Lo .br Markus Boas .br Nikolay Petukhov .br Peter Stuge .br Reinder E.N. de Haan .br Ronald G. Minnich .br Ronald Hoogenboom .br Stefan Reinauer .br Stefan Wildemann .br Steven James .br Uwe Hermann .br Wang Qingpei .br Yinghai Lu .br some others .PP This manual page was written by Uwe Hermann . It is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (version 2 or later).