On 2010/06/19 12:50, Roberto Fernandez wrote: > On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 01:42:08AM +0100, Stuart Henderson wrote: > > On 2010/06/19 02:33, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I'm one of the lead developers of flashrom, a GPLv2 application to > > > read/write/erase flash chips on mainboards, network/storage/graphics > > > cards and external programmers. Some people use flashrom to update their > > > BIOS/EFI or to add netbooting functionality to their network cards, or > > > to recover misflashed mainboards. Having to boot DOS/Windows to perform > > > those tasks is something many people would like to avoid, and being able > > > to work with flash chips from your favourite OS is definitely easier > > > than navigating in unknown waters. > > > If you want to learn more about flashrom, please visit > > > http://www.flashrom.org/ > > > > > > flashrom works on > > > Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD/DragonFlyBSD/OpenSolaris/MacOSX/DOS, and OpenBSD is > > > the last remaining major UNIX-like OS which wasn't supported until now. > > > > > > I have two patches which get flashrom to compile on OpenBSD on i386, and > > > they should work on amd64 as well. Those patches will be merged into the > > > official flashrom source tree once I know that they work. The big > > > obstacle for me is that I don't own any OpenBSD machine, and all I have > > > is shell access to a public OpenBSD i386 shell server. flashrom is > > > pretty small, you can compile it in ~5 seconds on a reasonably fast > > > machine, so compile testing shouldn't need too much time. > > > > > > How do I proceed? Ask for testers? Send the patches (or links to the > > > patch downloads) to this list? > > > > If you send me the patches I'll write a port Makefile for it. > > Then it's easier for people to test. Compile testing is no problem > > but I don't have any machines that I can spare to test actual bios > > updates on though. > > A way to reduce risks on these tests is here: > http://www.biosman.com/biosrecovery.html > > I never tested this myself, I have no floppy drive :(
This can sometimes work. But on many machines it only works if the checksum is bad. If you flash a wrong BIOS but the checksum is okay, you can't always recover from that. And vendors, especially for whitebox PC components, *do* sometimes fuck up and label download files incorrectly. (you can also try a hotswap with another machine - been there, done that, have no particular desire to do it again ;)
