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flashrom

Reads, writes and verifies SPI, LPC and parallel flash chips in place

What it does

Talks directly to a flash chip — usually the SPI ROM holding a system's firmware — through a USB programmer or an on-board interface, and reads, erases, writes or verifies it.

Why you would want it

It is how a firmware image gets off a board and back on again: dumping a router's ROM before modifying it, reflashing a bricked board through a clip, or recovering a system whose firmware update failed. For anyone working on RF hardware it is also the way into the flash on an SDR or a radio's control board.

Before it will work

A programmer flashrom supports and, for in-circuit work, a way to hold the host CPU off the bus. Access comes from the programmer hardware class.

How it installs

  • apt: flashrom

Known problems

The binary is /usr/sbin/flashrom, not /usr/bin — verified by listing the package contents on Debian 13 — so it is not on a normal user's PATH by default even after the group membership is right.

Writing the wrong image to a system's boot flash produces a machine that

does not start, and recovering it needs the same programmer you already have. Read and keep a copy first; flashrom will do that in one command and it is the only step that cannot be redone afterwards.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Source: catalog/packages/flashrom.yaml