--force may have been a good idea back when only developers were using

flashrom, but over the last few months we've seen too many people who
incorrectly believed that --force would solve anything.

One of the problems is that --force had multiple meanings:
- Force chip read by faking probe success.
- Force chip access even if the chip is bigger than max decode size for
  the flash bus.
- Force erase even if erase is known bad.
- Force write even if write is known bad.
- Force writing even if cbtable tells us that this is the wrong image
  for this board.

This patch cleans up --force usage:
- Remove any suggestions to use --force for probe/read from flashrom
  output.
- Don't talk about "success" or "Found chip" if the chip is forced.
- Add a new internal programmer parameter boardmismatch=force. This
  overrides any mismatch detection from cbtable/image comparisons.
- Add a new internal programmer parameter laptop=force_I_want_a_brick.
- Adjust the documentation for --force.
- Clean up the man page a bit whereever it talks about --force or
  laptops.

Additional changes in this patch:
- Add warnings about laptops to the documentation.
- Abort if a laptop is detected. Can be overridden with the programmer
parameter mentioned above.
- Add "Portable" to the list of DMI strings indicating laptops.
- Check if a chip specified with -c is known to flashrom.
- Programmer parameter reliability and consistency fixes.
- More paranoid self-checks.
- Improve documentation.

Signed-off-by: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net>
Acked-by: Michael Karcher <flashrom@mkarcher.dialup.fu-berlin.de>


git-svn-id: https://code.coreboot.org/svn/flashrom/trunk@996 2b7e53f0-3cfb-0310-b3e9-8179ed1497e1

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/README b/README
index 8ccfc2f..022c035 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -11,6 +11,12 @@ program flash chips.
 It supports a wide range of DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32, and TSOP40
 chips, which use various protocols such as LPC, FWH, parallel flash, or SPI.
 
+Do not use flashrom on laptops! The embedded controller (EC) present in many
+laptops interacts badly with any flash attempts and can brick your laptop
+permanently.
+
+Please make a backup of your flash chip before writing to it.
+
 Please see the flashrom(8) manpage.