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dfu-util

Device Firmware Upgrade tool — flash devices that expose a standard DFU mode

What it does

Implements the USB DFU protocol: lists devices in DFU mode, uploads and downloads firmware images, and ships udev rules for a long list of DFU- capable hardware.

Why you would want it

Several devices in this catalog enumerate differently in bootloader mode and are flashed over standard DFU rather than a vendor tool — the HackRF among them. It is also the generic answer for a board whose vendor tooling is not packaged anywhere.

Before it will work

A device in DFU mode, which usually means holding a button while attaching it, and plugdev membership.

How it installs

  • apt: dfu-util

Known problems

A device in DFU mode has a different USB identifier from the same device running normally, which is why several hardware entries record a separate dfu_usb_id. Interrupting a firmware write can leave a device recoverable only through DFU, which is fine when DFU is what you were using and not when it is not. This package is also the clearest illustration of why those identifiers stay out of usb_ids. Its shipped rule, 60-dfu-util.rules, grants access to 0483:df11 — and labels it exactly "# STM32", naming no device, because there is no device to name. The same pair reaches this catalog from two other packages calling it two other things: qflipper as a Flipper Zero, qdmr and dmrconfig as a TYT MD-UV380. The tool that talks to everything in DFU is the one that gets the identifier right, by declining to pretend it means a product. So an entry that wants it names it under firmware, where the operator has chosen the device, never in usb_ids, where the kernel matches whatever is attached.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Source: catalog/packages/dfu-util.yaml