v1.5 (Dec 2024) — flashrom v1.7.0 documentation

# v1.5 (Dec 2024)

This document describes the major changes in flashrom version v1.5.0, from more than 80 patches contributed by more than 20 authors (thank you!).

And we all did it in just ~4 months since previous release.

## Download

flashrom v1.5 can be downloaded either via anonymous git at https://review.coreboot.org/flashrom.git, or as signed source tarballs.

The key fingerprint for source tarballs is

6E6E F9A0 BA47 8006 E277 6E4C C037 BB41 3134 D111

### Version v1.5.1

Version 1.5.1 fixed an issue flashing some Intel-based platforms with the internal programmer that was introduced in 1.5.0. Users with older Intel-based platforms (Broadwell/Braswell and earlier) flashing using the internal programmer option might encounter an 'Invalid OPCODE' error when erasing/writing which would lead to an incomplete flash and potentially a bricked device. External flashing was not affected at all.

All users are encouraged to update.

Ticket: https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/573

Patch: https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/85612

Git tag: `v1.5.1`

Tarball: https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-v1.5.1.tar.xz

Signature: https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-v1.5.1.tar.xz.asc

### Version v1.5.0

Git tag: `v1.5.0`

Tarball: https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-v1.5.0.tar.xz

Signature: https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-v1.5.0.tar.xz.asc

## Known issues

AMD-based PCs with FCH are unable to read flash contents for internal (BIOS flash) chips larger than 16 MB, and attempting to do so may crash the system. Systems with AMD "Promontory" IO extenders (mostly "Zen" desktop platforms) are not currently supported.

https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/370

## Build only supported with Meson

As documented in the v1.4 release notes, support for building flashrom with make has been removed; all Makefiles have been deleted. Meson is now the only supported tool for building flashrom from source.

## New Features

### Support for ECAM

Libpci 3.13.0 and onwards support ECAM to access pci registers. flashrom will be moved to ECAM from IO port 0xcf8/0xcfc if the libpci version is >= 3.13.0. The ECAM has been supported for a very long time, most platforms should support it. For those platforms don't support ECAM, libpci will terminate the process by exit.

### Progress bar

Progress bar feature is now working for all operations: read, erase, write.

To display progress bar, add `--progress` option on the command line.

### Option to choose between speed and longevity of the chip

New command line option `--sacrifice-ratio` handles the following situation:

There is a region which is requested to be erased (or written, because the write operation uses erase too). Some of the areas inside this region don't need to be erased, because the bytes already have expected value. Such areas can be skipped.

The logic selects eraseblocks that can cover the areas which need to be erased. Suppose there is a region which is partially covered by eraseblocks of size S (partially because remaining areas don't need to be erased). Now suppose we can cover the whole region with eraseblock of larger size, S+1, and erase it all at once. This will run faster: erase opcode will only be sent once instead of many smaller opcodes. However, this will run erase over some areas of the chip memory that didn't need to be erased. Which means the physical chip will wear out faster.

This new option sets the maximum % of memory that is allowed for redundant erase. Default is 0, S+1 size block only selected if all the area needs to be erased in full. 50 means that if more than a half of the area needs to be erased, a S+1 size block can be selected to cover the entire area with one block.

The tradeoff is the speed of programming operation VS the longevity of the chip. Default is longevity.

### RPMC support added

Adding support for RPMC commands as specified by JESD260 to the cli_client.

Main implementation is in `rpmc.c`. Also adds new parsing capabilities for the SFDP page carrying the necessary information. All the features are optional and depend on `libcrypto`.

It currently uses automatic feature detection through the corresponding SFDP page.

## Programmer updates

- ch347_spi: Add spi clock frequency selection (`spispeed` option)

- dummyflasher: Enable higher frequency emulation, add docs and tests

- ichspi: Change the opcode position for reprogramming on the fly 2->4

- ichspi: Merge spi_master implementations for Intel ich

- stlinkv3_spi: Mark STLinkV3-Mini not working

## Bugs fixed

- Modified bytes would sometimes not be verified after writing

  In some situations an off-by-one error would cause the last byte of memory that was modified by an operation to not be verified. This could prevent some erase or write errors from being detected, or in other cases could make verification appear false-negative.

  Fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84078.

- Possible crashes while preparing erase operations

  An out-of-bounds memory read was found in the algorithm that selects methods to erase memory, which could cause flashrom to crash. This issue was first introduced in release 1.4, and crashes were observed when running on OpenBSD.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/555, and fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84234.

- Crash when attempting to erase FEATURE_NO_ERASE chips

  When attempting to erase a chip that doesn't need to be erased before being written, flashrom could attempt to read through a null pointer and crash. The only supported chip that is affected is the M95M02 EEPROM.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/553, and fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84203.

- install failures related to libcmocka

  In some configurations, the install target provided by the buildsystem (like meson install) would fail to execute successfully due to a missing libcmocka file. This is fixed by not installing libcmocka, because it is a third-party library used by flashrom only for testing.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/561, and fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84557.

- Excess erase of automatically-probed chips on Intel chipsets

  When erasing some chips using the ichspi programmer (for Intel ICH chipsets), the entire chip would be erased and rewritten even when the hardware supported erasing smaller blocks, causing operations to take longer to complete and negatively impacting chip longevity. This issue was first introduced in version 1.4.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/556, and fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84253.

- Unnecessary erases

  When erasing parts of a memory, some blocks could be erased and rewritten unnecessarily or erased multiple times which could hurt the longevity of the memory chip. This behavior was introduced in version 1.4.

  Fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84614 and https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84686.

## Chipset support

Added Raptor Point PCH support.

## Chip model support added

- FM25Q04

- FM25Q64

- FM25Q128

- GD25B128E

- GD25B256E

- GD25B512MF

- GD25F64F

- GD25F128F

- GD25F256F

- GD25R128E

- GD25R256E

- GD25R512MF

- GD25LB256F

- GD25LB512ME

- GD25LB512MF

- GD25LR256F

- GD25LR512MF

- GD25LF256F

- GD25LF512MF

- MX25U25645G

- MX77U51250F

- W25Q32JV_M

- W25R512NW

- W74M51NW

- XM25LU64C

- XM25QH32C

- XM25QH32D

- XM25QH64D

- XM25QH128D

- XM25QH256D

- XM25QH512C

- XM25QH512D

- XM25QU16C

- XM25QU32C

- XM25QU128D

- XM25QU256D

- XM25QU512C

- XM25QU512D

- S25FL256L marked as tested

## Misc

- reduce DELAY_MINIMUM_SLEEP_US to 100 by default

- tests: Add assert for eraseblocks order of invocations for write op

- tests: Add header stdlib.h to allow scan-build to do analysis

- VERSION: Change name pattern to match tag name from now on

- writeprotect: Fix inaccurate return code

- erasure_layout: Fix unreachable error message

- linux_mtd: fix build with clang >= 19

- Extract usbdev declarations to a separate header

- chipset_enable.c: Add TGL chipset detection based on SPI PCI ID

- flashchips: Skip "WP untested" message for SFDP-capable chip

- sfdp: Update the message shown when SFDP-capable chip is detected

- build script: Add rpmc option to always be enabled on Jenkins

- Rename cli_classic.h to a more adequate cli_getop.h