[flashrom] Scary error message

[Fraser Hanson]

Hi,

I flashed my bios with flashrom tonight and got the scary warning
message saying "erase failed" and "do not reboot".

I haven't rebooted.

As far as I can tell from using flashrom itself, everything is
actually fine. The erase appears to have failed at physical address 0,
which I would guess means that nothing actually happened.

I had taken a dump of the original bios before starting, and "flashrom
-v" now verifies that it is identical.

Furthermore, a new dump of the bios matches the original dump from
before I tried to write the bios.

My board is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.

Output from my dump attempt and subsequent messing around follows.

Do I have your blessing to reboot my machine?

--Fraser



======================================================================

fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom
flashrom v0.9.1-r706
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
No operations were specified.


fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -w W7125NMS.1D0
flashrom v0.9.1-r706
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
Writing flash chip... Programming page: ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000!
Expected=0xff, Read=0x49, failed byte count from
0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x599
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED!
FAILED!
Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net channel #flashrom or
mail flashrom at flashrom.org
------------------------------------------------------------
DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!

fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -w original.bios
flashrom v0.9.1-r706
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
Writing flash chip... Programming page: ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000!
Expected=0xff, Read=0x49, failed byte count from
0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x599
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED!
FAILED!
Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net channel #flashrom or
mail flashrom at flashrom.org
------------------------------------------------------------
DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!


fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -r bios
flashrom v0.9.1-r706
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
Reading flash... done.

fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ md5sum bios
8382ac62ffcfe57a86514dad936deb82  bios

fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ md5sum original.bios
8382ac62ffcfe57a86514dad936deb82  original.bios

fraser at ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -v original.bios
flashrom v0.9.1-r706
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
Verifying flash... VERIFIED.