flashrom is a utility for detecting, reading, writing, verifying and erasing flash chips. It is 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.
It supports a wide range of flash chips (most commonly found in SOIC8, DIP8, SOIC16, WSON8, PLCC32, DIP32, TSOP32, and TSOP40 packages), which use various protocols such as LPC, FWH, parallel flash, or SPI.
Do not use flashrom on laptops (yet)! The embedded controller (EC) present in many laptops might interact badly with any attempts to communicate with the flash chip and may brick your laptop.
Please make a backup of your flash chip before writing to it.
Please see the flashrom(8) manpage.
To package flashrom and remove dependencies on Git, either use make export or make tarball
'make export' will export all flashrom files from the Git repository at revision HEAD into a directory named "$EXPORTDIR/flashrom-$RELEASENAME" and will additionally add a "versioninfo.inc" file in that directory to contain the Git revision of the exported tree and a date for the manual page.
'make tarball' will simply tar up the result of make export and compress it with bzip2.
The snapshot tarballs are the result of 'make tarball' and require no further processing.
To build flashrom you need to install the following software:
Linux et al:
On FreeBSD, you need the following ports:
On OpenBSD, you need the following ports:
To compile on Linux, use:
make
To compile on FreeBSD, OpenBSD or DragonFly BSD, use:
gmake
To compile on Nexenta, use:
make
To compile on Solaris, use:
gmake LDFLAGS="-L$pathtolibpci" CC="gcc -I$pathtopciheaders" CFLAGS=-O2
To compile on NetBSD (with pciutils, libftdi, libusb installed in /usr/pkg/), use:
gmake
To compile and run on Darwin/Mac OS X:
Install DirectHW from coresystems GmbH. DirectHW is available at http://www.coreboot.org/DirectHW .
To cross-compile on Linux for DOS:
Get packages of the DJGPP cross compiler and install them: djgpp-filesystem djgpp-gcc djgpp-cpp djgpp-runtime djgpp-binutils As an alternative, the DJGPP web site offers packages for download as well: djcross-binutils-2.29.1-1ap.x86_64.rpm djcross-gcc-7.2.0-1ap.x86_64.rpm djcrx-2.05-5.x86_64.rpm The cross toolchain packages for your distribution may have slightly different names (look for packages named djgpp).
Alternatively, you could use a script to build it from scratch: https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp
You will need the libpci and libgetopt library source trees and their compiled static libraries and header files installed in some directory say libpci-libgetopt/, which will be later specified with LIBS_BASE parameter during flashrom compilation. Easiest way to handle it is to put pciutils, libgetopt and flashrom directories in one subdirectory. There will be an extra subdirectory libpci-libgetopt created, which will contain compiled libpci and libgetopt.
Download pciutils 3.5.6 and apply http://flashrom.org/File:Pciutils-3.5.6.patch.gz Compile pciutils, using following command line:
make ZLIB=no DNS=no HOST=i386-djgpp-djgpp CROSS_COMPILE=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp- \ PREFIX=/ DESTDIR=$PWD/../libpci-libgetopt \ STRIP="--strip-program=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp-strip -s" install install-lib
Download and compile with 'make' http://flashrom.org/File:Libgetopt.tar.gz
Copy the libgetopt.a to ../libpci-libgetopt/lib and getopt.h to ../libpci-libgetopt/include
Enter the flashrom directory.
make CC=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp-gcc STRIP=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp-strip LIBS_BASE=../libpci-libgetopt/ strip
If you like, you can compress the resulting executable with UPX:
upx -9 flashrom.exe
To run flashrom.exe, download http://flashrom.org/File:Csdpmi7b.zip and unpack CWSDPMI.EXE into the current directory or one in PATH.
To cross-compile on Linux for Windows:
Get packages of the MinGW cross compiler and install them: mingw32-filesystem mingw32-cross-cpp mingw32-cross-binutils mingw32-cross-gcc mingw32-runtime mingw32-headers The cross toolchain packages for your distribution may have slightly different names (look for packages named mingw). PCI-based programmers (internal etc.) are not supported on Windows. Run (change CC= and STRIP= settings where appropriate) make CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc STRIP=i686-w64-mingw32-strip
Processor architecture dependent features:
On non-x86 architectures a few programmers don't work (yet) because they use port-based I/O which is not directly available on non-x86. Those programmers will be disabled automatically if you run "make".
Compiler quirks:
If you are using clang and if you want to enable only one driver, you may hit an overzealous compiler warning from clang. Compile with "make WARNERROR=no" to force it to continue and enjoy.
In order to install flashrom and the manpage into /usr/local, type:
make install
For installation in a different directory use DESTDIR, e.g. like this:
make DESTDIR=/usr install
If you have insufficient permissions for the destination directory, use sudo by adding sudo in front of the commands above.
The official flashrom website is:
The IRC channel is
The mailing list address is
flashrom@flashrom.org