flashprog

flashprog 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.

Be careful when using flashprog on laptops! The embedded controller (EC) present in older laptops (~pre 2011) 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 flashprog(8) manpage.

Source Packaging

To package flashprog and remove dependencies on Git, either use make export or make tarball

'make export' will export all flashprog files from the Git repository at revision HEAD into a directory named "$EXPORTDIR/flashprog-$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.

Build Instructions

To build flashprog you need to install the following software:

git (if you check out the source from the repository)
build utilities: meson or make and a C compiler (build-essential or similar depending on OS/distribution)
pkg-config to find library dependencies
pciutils+libpci (if you want support for mainboard or PCI device flashing)
libusb 1.0 development package (if you want support for USB programmers, except BusPirate and serprog based)
libftdi 1.0 development package (if you want support for FT2232H or programmers based on it)
libjaylink development package (if you want support for J-LINK programmers)
libgpiod development package (if you want support for GPIO bitbanging under Linux)

Compilation with a limited set of programmer drivers is possible. make will output hints how to disable programmers with missing dependencies.

Package names for the above vary across OS distributions:

On Linux et al, look for the following packages:

git
gcc
meson / make
pkg-config / pkgconf (not needed if none of the below are used)
pciutils / libpci (optional)
pciutils-devel / pciutils-dev / libpci-dev (optional)
libusb / libusb-1.0-0-dev (optional)
libftdi / libftdi1-dev (optional)
libjaylink / libjaylink-dev (optional)
libgpiod / libgpiod-dev (optional)

On FreeBSD, you need the following ports:

devel/gmake
devel/libpci

On OpenBSD, you need the following ports:

devel/gmake
sysutils/pciutils

Building

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 flashprog compilation. Easiest way to handle it is to put pciutils, libgetopt and flashprog 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 https://flashprog.org/wiki/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' https://flashprog.org/wiki/File:Libgetopt.tar.gz

Copy the libgetopt.a to ../libpci-libgetopt/lib and getopt.h to ../libpci-libgetopt/include

Enter the flashprog directory.

make CC=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp-gcc STRIP=i586-pc-msdosdjgpp-strip
LIBS_BASE=../libpci-libgetopt/ HAS_LIBPCI=yes CONFIG_LIBPCI_LDFLAGS=-lpci
strip

If you like, you can compress the resulting executable with UPX:

upx -9 flashprog.exe

To run flashprog.exe, download https://flashprog.org/wiki/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.

Installation

In order to install flashprog 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.

Branching and release policy

Feature development happens on the main branch
Branch-off points for releases are tagged with tags that start with p, such as p1.0
Release branches have a .x suffix, for example 1.0.x
Release tags start with v, for example v1.0 or v1.0.1
Release candidate tags additionally end with -rcN, for example v1.0-rc1

Contact

The official flashprog website is:

https://flashprog.org/

Available contact methods are

https://flashprog.org/wiki/Contact

SourceArcade/flashprog