[flashrom] Re: Verification after write vs erase operations

[Peter Marheine]

I think the existing flag should be extended to skip verify for erase as
well. As you observe, erase is basically a special case of write that
writes the blank value to the chip. Since you can't do a combination of
erase and write in a single invocation, there's no reason to make a new
flag because there's no need to indicate which of multiple operations
should be verified.

On Fri, Mar 1, 2024 at 8:39 PM Anastasia Klimchuk  wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I want to bring into discussion a topic of verification of chip
> content which is performed after write or erase operations.
> Also for context prior discussion in this ticket:
> https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/520
>
> Currently we have a flag `-n` or `dont_verify_it` which is false by
> default. What the flag is doing is deciding whether verification needs
> to be performed after writing. The flag is false by default, so by
> default verification is happening after writing (which makes sense).
>
> Now the flag is only controlling write operation, and has no effect on
> erase operation. So for erase, the flag is ignored and verification is
> performed always. Just for context, it has always been like this.
>
> So for write operation we have a power option to say "ignore
> verification", and since it's false by default, the idea is, if you
> set it true then you know what you are doing.
> There is no such option for erase which seems a bit unfair.
>
> The two potential options to introduce equivalent option for erase are:
> Add new flag `dont_verify_erase` (or some similar name)
>
> As a support for this option, it does not affect any existing use
> cases/scripts, and can be added any time.
> Add coverage for erase operation under existing flag `-n` or
>
> `dont_verify_it`
>
> As a support for this option, erase operation can be seen as a variant
> of writing, since it does modify content of the chip, and so the fact
> it's not covered by the existing flag can be treated as a bug.
>
> What do people think about it?