FAQ: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:45, 26 May 2016

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).

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.

CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM can make flashrom stop working, in that case you can try adding "iomem=relaxed" to your kernel parameters.

Please see the flashrom(8) manpage.

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 * Another poster reported that [http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2008-December/043497.html CONFIG_X86_PAT will also stop flashrom from working]. Please try booting with the nopat kernel parameter to temporarily disable it.
-* If this is still not working, you could also try adding "iomem=relaxed" to your kernel parameters.
+* CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM can make flashrom stop working, in that case you can try adding "iomem=relaxed" to your kernel parameters.
 == How do I use flashrom? ==