Uwe Hermann - Flashing a BIOS the Linux Way (tm) using flashrom - Comments

flashrom help

Uwe Hermann — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:56:22 +0100

Hi, please ask on the flashrom mailing list or in the IRC channel. Make sure to mention the board vendor and name, and post the output of "flashrom -V", preferrably using the latest flashrom version (built from source, or from Debian unstable which is pretty recent).

In general: the file size _must_ match, so if your current BIOS is 1024KB, the new one you want to flash must also be 1024KB. But please check back on the mailing list or IRC for more help and information, don't flash anything if you're not sure it'll work.

Thanks, Uwe.

-wv does not work/ retrieved file with -r is 1024kB

Petra — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:06:49 +0100

flashrom -wv givesme something like "two operations read help"
flashrom -r results in a 1024kB not 512kB file, but the mainboard is in the supported ok list.
any help for me?

question about filesize

Petra — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:34:22 +0100

flashrom -r gives me a file of 1024 kB. Thats the correct filesize of the official msi bios. My board is in the supported list (ok). Is it safe to use flashrom, as you mentioned a correct filesize of 512kB?

flashrom

Uwe Hermann — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:48:19 +0200

Depends, if the P4B533-1015.003 file is exactly 512KB in size it is likely a pure BIOS image (not a DOS/Windows executable or something else). Flashrom does not care about the file name itself though, you don't have to rename it.

Either way, please contact the developers on the mailing list and/or IRC (#flashrom on Freenode) for details and mention which board you use, not all of them are supported.

http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom

Uwe.

I have a question ...

Maxcrack — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:23:07 +0200

Hi all,
I need to update the bios because I need a the new version for install a new CPU.

When i run flashrom in my CentOS Server 5.3 I get this message:

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "Intel ICH4/ICH4-L", enabling flash write... OK.
Found chip "SST SST49LF004A/B" (512 KB) at physical address 0xfff80000.
No operations were specified.

I downloaded the latest BIOS for my motherboard from the Asus site and it is called P4B533-1015.003.

My question is...
I write flashrom -wv P4B533-1015.003 or rename the file P4B533-1015.003 in P4B533-1015.003.bin and run flashrom -wv P4B533-1015.003.bin ?

Here goes nothing!

Alex — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:56:56 +0200

This is an extremely useful post, especially after trying in vain to create boot cds, boot usb keys, etc. etc. i was able to read, write and verify my new bios in literally 3 commands on my flaky Shuttle XPC SG33G5B.

Now whether my computer boots up again is another story, but, oh wait, this piece of crap barely wants to boot as it is!! But that's another story altogether...

flashrom backups

Uwe Hermann — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:10:36 +0200

No, if you did "flashrom -r backup.bin" it should have created a file called backup.bin containing your original BIOS in the current directory. That's not stored in RAM but rather on your disk, so it should survive a reboot.

Please contact the coreboot@coreboot.org mailing list or join the #coreboot IRC channel on Freenode, I hope we can help restore your system.

Where is the backup stored?

Oakems — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:16:08 +0200

Am I right in thinking step three creates a backup? If so where is this backup stored?

As you might of guessed I killed my bios, all went well and there didn't appear to be any problems so I thought I was good to go. But as I tried to reboot I noticed it had gone horribly wrong, it shutdown the OS (Fedora 9). but actually shutdown. I think this was my error, I flashed the rom with a .700 file and I think that's why it didn't work. MSI have their own flash utility and I think it turns the .700 into a usable format. The reason I didn't use MSI's utility is the instructions that I found for it were all for Windows users and they were riddled with .EXE's (I realize/remember now that Dos also uses .EXE right? D'oh!)

I've tired using the flash recovery methods (AMIBOOT) but I can't use the flash utility, and I cannot find the same version of bios.

I'm guessing the backup is stored in ram so when the PC powers down you lose it? But I like to clutch at straws?

Reading the ROM contents

Uwe Hermann — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:55:37 +0200

That's strange, never seen that.

Did you try "flashrom -r foo.bin" as root? Did you use the latest flashrom version? Try to boot with "nopat" on the Linux kernel command line. You might also have to use a kernel which does not use CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM...

reset?

freedom — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:04:08 +0200

Seems like my MSI GX610 laptop bios are not supported... :(
I can't even read the bios... it keeps returning in console
reset
reset
reset
..
...

flashrom

AntonK — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:27:56 +0100

:(
Got a killed motherboard GA-8IE (Gigabyte Intel 845) with soldered 49LF002A.
Flashing reported as unsuccessful,
flashing back original BIOS either unsuccessful,
comparing 1st time read bios and 2nd time show 00-filled tail of eprom (about 30%).
Seems like bootblock (BIOS restoration from floppy) is overwritten.

Flashrom writes

Uwe Hermann — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:46:26 +0200

It could be, but it doesn't have to be, unfortunately.

Your mainboard might require a special "init" sequence to allow ROM writes, which is likely not documented anywhere and flashrom probably doesn't know about.

I'd only try writing if you have a means of recovery in case things go bad; an example is if your BIOS is in a socket so you can remove it, flash it externally (in another board or using an external programmer) and then re-insert it. On a laptop that's probably not easily possible...

If you really want to find out, try re-flashing the exact same image you just read from the chip. In theory, even if the write fails your board should not be bricked. Use "flashrom -wv bios.bak" in that case (-v for "verify") and flashrom will tell you if the write worked. If that worked fine, you could try to flash a different BIOS image and see if that works, too.

ALL OF THIS MAY BRICK YOUR MAINBOARD! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

(just in case :-)

HTH, Uwe.

it seems to work now!

Evgeni Golov — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:56:58 +0200

As of your today's upload (r2769), flashrom seems to support my X31 ThinkPad (not tested with the Z61m yet):

# flashrom -r bios.bak
Calibrating delay loop... ok
No LinuxBIOS table found.
Found chipset "ICH4-M": Enabling flash write... OK.
M50FW080 found at physical address: 0xfff00000
Flash part is M50FW080 (1024 KB)
Reading Flash...done

Should writing back be safe?

Regards
Evgeni

flashrom

Uwe Hermann — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:00:06 +0200

Yep, should work (see above).

Uwe.

flashrom

Uwe Hermann — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:55:14 +0200

Yep, looks good, it should work. Do make a backup of your original BIOS, of course, and first try to reflash the backup BIOS (just to see whether errors appear, but I doubt it).

If you want to be really, really safe you can get a second ROM chip and flash the backup image on that one...

HTH, Uwe.

Flashing a BIOS the Linux Way (tm) using flashrom

Uwe Hermann — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:41:40 +0200

There are a gazillion HOWTOs out there for flashing a BIOS image without having to resort to ugly "boot DOS from floppy" or "run Windows *.exe file from BIOS vendor" and other ugly stuff. Unfortunately, the proposed solutions are equally ugly (e.g. creating custom CD-ROMs which contain the "floppy" with DOS/Windows flash tools).

Folks, this is so much simpler than you think:

The flashrom tool (GPL'd, written for LinuxBIOS purposes, but works perfectly fine with proprietary BIOSes, too) will easily do what you want, on a running Linux system. No floppy crap, no CD-ROM crap, no DOS/Windows crap, no rebooting crap.

Install it:

  $ apt-get install flashrom

Detect whether flashrom knows about your chipset/mainboard/BIOS chip:

  $ flashrom

Read the BIOS image into a file:

  $ flashrom -r backup.bin

Write a BIOS image (proprietary or LinuxBIOS) on the ROM chip:

  $ flashrom -wv newbios.bin

WARNING: This will overwrite your current BIOS! Make sure you know what you're doing!

For the Debian-challenged, flashrom is available in source form too, of course:

  $ svn co svn://linuxbios.org/repos/trunk/util/flashrom
  $ cd flashrom
  $ make

The list of supported chipsets, mainboards, and ROM chips is limited of course, but it's constantly expanding. Contact us on the LinuxBIOS mailing list if you want other hardware supported (or even better: if you have patches!). In many cases adding support for new hardware is pretty easy...