| .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. |
| .TP |
| .B "\-r, \-\-read <file>" |
| Read flash ROM contents and save them into the given |
| .BR <file> . |
| .TP |
| .B "\-w, \-\-write <file>" |
| 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 <file>" |
| Verify the flash ROM contents against the given |
| .BR <file> . |
| .TP |
| .B "\-E, \-\-erase" |
| Erase the flash ROM chip. |
| .TP |
| .B "\-V, \-\-verbose" |
| More verbose output. |
| .TP |
| .B "\-c, \-\-chip" <chipname> |
| Probe only for specified flash ROM chip. |
| .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 "\-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 <file>" |
| Read ROM layout from |
| .BR <file> . |
| .TP |
| .B "\-i, \-\-image <name>" |
| Only flash image |
| .B <name> |
| 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 <name>" |
| 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 "* 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 |
| The dummy programmer has an optional parameter specifying 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" |
| .sp |
| If you have multiple supported PCI cards which can program flash chips |
| (NICs, SATA/IDE controllers, etc.) in your system, you must use the |
| .B "flashrom -p xxxx:bb:dd.f" |
| syntax to explicitly select one of them, 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" |
| .sp |
| Currently the following programmers support this mechanism: |
| .BR nic3com , |
| .BR gfxnvidia , |
| .BR satasii . |
| .sp |
| The it87spi programmer has an optional parameter which will set the I/O base |
| port of the IT87* SPI controller interface to the port specified in the |
| parameter. 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. |
| .sp |
| The ft2232spi programmer has an optional parameter specifying 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 |
| .B A |
| .BR B . |
| The default model is |
| .B 4232H |
| and the default interface is |
| .BR B . |
| .sp |
| The serprog programmer has an optional parameter specifying either a serial |
| device/baud combination or an IP/port combination for communication with the |
| programmer. 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. |
| .sp |
| The buspiratespi programmer has a required dev parameter specifying the Bus |
| Pirate device node and an optional spispeed parameter specifying the frequency |
| of the SPI bus. The parameter delimiter is a comma. Syntax is |
| .B "flashrom -p buspiratespi:dev=/dev/device,spispeed=frequency" |
| where |
| .B frequency |
| can be any of |
| .B 30k 125k 250k 1M 2M 2.6M 4M 8M |
| (in Hz). |
| .sp |
| 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 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 <claus.gindhart@kontron.com> |
| .br |
| Dominik Geyer <dominik.geyer@kontron.com> |
| .br |
| Eric Biederman |
| .br |
| Giampiero Giancipoli <gianci@email.it> |
| .br |
| Joe Bao <Zheng.Bao@amd.com> |
| .br |
| Luc Verhaegen <libv@skynet.be> |
| .br |
| Li-Ta Lo |
| .br |
| Markus Boas <ryven@ryven.de> |
| .br |
| Nikolay Petukhov <nikolay.petukhov@gmail.com> |
| .br |
| Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> |
| .br |
| Reinder E.N. de Haan <lb_reha@mveas.com> |
| .br |
| Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> |
| .br |
| Ronald Hoogenboom <ronald@zonnet.nl> |
| .br |
| Stefan Reinauer <stepan@coresystems.de> |
| .br |
| Stefan Wildemann <stefan.wildemann@kontron.com> |
| .br |
| Steven James <pyro@linuxlabs.com> |
| .br |
| Uwe Hermann <uwe@hermann-uwe.de> |
| .br |
| Wang Qingpei |
| .br |
| Yinghai Lu |
| .br |
| some others |
| .PP |
| This manual page was written by Uwe Hermann <uwe@hermann-uwe.de>. |
| It is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (version 2 or later). |