FAQ

flashrom doesn't work on my board, what can I do?

• First of all, check if your chipset, ROM chip, and mainboard are supported (see Supported hardware, or use flashrom -L).
• If your board has a jumper for BIOS flash protection (check the manual), disable it.
• Should your BIOS menu have a BIOS flash protection option, disable it.
• If you run flashrom on a Linux system with kernels >= 2.6.27 there are two issues you have to check:
  • See next question: X86_PAT and nopat
  • See next question: CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM
• If you run flashrom on OpenBSD, you might need to obtain raw access permission by setting securelevel=-1 in /etc/rc.securelevel and rebooting, or rebooting into single user mode.

• See this page for instructions on how to test flashrom support properly (this may be risky, make sure you have a working backup flash chip).

I get 'Can't mmap memory using /dev/mem: Invalid argument'

• The easiest fix is to update to latest flashrom from svn. It has less strict requirements and works on more systems without having to change the kernel.

• (Not needed for latest flashrom from svn) Please check that your kernel doesn't have CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM set, as it will stop flashrom from working.

• Another poster reported that CONFIG_X86_PAT will also stop flashrom from working. Please try booting with the nopat kernel parameter to temporarily disable it.

How do I use flashrom?

Please see the flashrom(8) manpage.

Is there a flashrom Live CD?

See Flashrom/Live CD.