| .TH FLASHROM 8 "Apr 29, 2010" |
| .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 <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 <programmername>[:<parameters>]] |
| .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 \-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 \-r before you try to write a new |
| image. |
| .TP |
| .B "\-r, \-\-read <file>" |
| Read flash ROM contents and save them into the given |
| .BR <file> . |
| .TP |
| .B "\-w, \-\-write <file>" |
| Write |
| .B <file> |
| into flash ROM. |
| .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 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. This option takes the chip name as |
| printed by |
| .B "flashrom \-L" |
| without the vendor name. Please note that the chip name is case sensitive. |
| .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 --mainboard AGAMI:ARUMA -w 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 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 max decode 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 <file>" |
| Read ROM layout from |
| .BR <file> . |
| .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 <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/. Please note |
| that MediaWiki output is not compiled in by default. |
| .TP |
| .B "\-p, \-\-programmer <name>[:parameter[,parameter[,parameter]]]" |
| 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 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 \-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 |
| 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. You can use |
| .sp |
| .B "flashrom -p internal:it87spiport=portnum" |
| syntax as explained in the |
| .B it87spi |
| programmer section to use a non-default port for controlling the IT87 series |
| Super I/O. In the unlikely case flashrom doesn't detect an active IT87 LPC<->SPI |
| bridge, you can try to force recognition by using the it87spi programmer. |
| .sp |
| Using flashrom on laptops is dangerous and may easily make your hardware |
| unusable (see also the BUGS section). The embedded controller (EC) in these |
| machines often interacts badly with flashing. 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 |
| 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:it87spiport=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 specifies the Bus Pirate device node and an optional |
| spispeed parameter specifies 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 at |
| .BR 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. |
| .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 |
| Michael Karcher <flashrom@mkarcher.dialup.fu-berlin.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 |
| Sean Nelson <audiohacked@gmail.com> |
| .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> and Carl-Daniel |
| Hailfinger. |
| It is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (version 2 or later). |