dfu-tool - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

dfu-tool - Device Firmware Upgrade Tool

SYNOPSIS

dfu-tool [ --verbose ] [ --version ] [ --force ] [ --device=VID:PID ] [ --transfer-
size=BYTES ]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the dfu-tool command.

dfu-tool allows a user to write various kinds of firmware onto devices supporting the USB
Device Firmware Upgrade protocol. This tool can be used to switch the device from the
normal runtime mode to `DFU mode' which allows the user to read and write firmware.
Either the whole device can be written in one operation, or individual `targets' can be
specified with the alternative name or number.

dfu-tool uses the libdfu shared library to perform actions. All synchronous actions can
be safely cancelled and on failure will return errors with both a type and a full textual
description. libdfu supports DFU 1.0, DFU 1.1 and the ST DfuSe vendor extension, and
handles many device `quirks' necessary for the real-world implementations of DFU.

Additionally dfu-tool can be used to convert firmware from various different formats, or
to modify details about the elements, images and metadata contained inside the firmware
file. For example, you can easily convert DFU 1.1 firmware into the vendor-specific DfuSe
format, convert a Intel HEX file into a raw file padded to a specific size, or add new
copyright and licensing information to an existing file. Fields such as the vendor and
product IDs can be changed, and the firmware elements can be encrypted and decrypted using
various different methods. Merging two DfuSe files together is also possible, although
specifying different alt-setting numbers before merging is a good idea to avoid confusion.

Although dfu-tool tries to provide a large number of easy-to-use commands, it may only be
possible to do certain operations using the libdfu library directly. This is easier than
it sounds, as the library is built with GObject Introspection support making it usable in
many languages such as C, Javascript and Python. Furthermore, using the library is a good
idea if you want to perform multiple operations on large firmware files, for instance,
converting from an Intel HEX file, padding to a certain size, setting vendor and adding
licensing information and then saving to a remote location.

OPTIONS

This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with
two dashes (-). A summary of options is included below.

--help
Show summary of all the commands available for use.

--version
Show the version of dfu-tool installed.

--verbose
Show extra debugging information.

--device=VID:PID
If multiple DFU-capable devices are attached you can specify the specific vendor
and product ID of the DFU device you want to query.

--transfer-size=BYTES
Manually override the size of each USB transfer, which you may want for unreliable
hardware or when the device lies about the maximum packet size it accepts.

--force
Force the operation, disregarding warnings or sanity checks like file CRC and
checksums. This is useful if you really know what you are doing, or in the
specialised case of fuzz-testing libdfu.

DEVICE COMMANDS

These commands are used to interface with DFU-capable devices.

list
This command lists currently attached DFU capable devices. Some devices do not
support the official DFU runtime mode and thus do not support auto-discovery using
this command. For those devices, putting the device into DFU mode manually (e.g.
by holding a button down when rebooting the device) will make it show up here.

detach
This command detaches the currently attached DFU capable device into a special
programming mode. Whilst the device is in this special DFU mode it can not be used
as a normal device. For example, a printer will not accept documents when in DFU
mode.

attach
This command attaches a DFU capable device back to runtime so it can be used as a
normal device. Some devices do not support attaching, and need to be manually
disconnected and connected before changing modes.

watch
This command watches DFU devices being hotplugged and can be used to verify libdfu
matches up the runtime and DFU modes when attaching and detaching. Use CTRL+C to
make this command quit.

read FILENAME
This command uploads all the firmware from device into a file. If the device has
multiple partitions exported as different alternative sections then they will all
be read into a multi-image DfuSe-format file. If you just want the contents of one
partition, read-alt is the command you want.

read-alt FILENAME DEVICE-ALT-NAME|DEVICE-ALT-ID
This command uploads firmware from one partition into a file. You can specify the
partition by either the ALT-ID or ALT-NAME if set.

e.g. dfu-tool read-alt backup.dfu SRAM

write
This command downloads firmware from a file into all possible partitions of a
device. If you only want to write one partition, write-alt is the command you
want.

write-alt FILENAME DEVICE-ALT-NAME|DEVICE-ALT-ID [IMAGE-ALT-NAME|IMAGE-ALT-ID]
This command downloads firmware from the file into one partition. You can specify
the partition by either the ALT-ID or ALT-NAME if set.

e.g. dfu-tool write-alt sram.dfu SRAM __SRAM

FIRMWARE COMMANDS

These commands are used to read and modify existing firmware files.

dump FILENAME
This command dumps all know details about a firmware file. The complete memory map
is shown, along with any metadata or vendor information about the firmware file.

convert FORMAT FILE-IN FILE-OUT [SIZE]
This command converts the firmware from one format to another, optionally padding
to a certain size. Possible values for the destination FORMAT include: raw, ihex,
dfu and dfuse. The FILE-IN and FILE-OUT values can be the same if the source file
is to be overwritten. Although padding increases the file size with no apparent
advantages it can be used to support devices that do not store the runtime image
size and where validation of the written firmware is required.

e.g. dfu-tool convert dfu firmware.hex firmware.dfu 8000

encrypt FILENAME-IN FILENAME-OUT TYPE KEY
This command encrypts firmware data. Only the image contents are actually
modified, the DFU footer and DfuSe header are left unaltered. Possible values for
the destination TYPE include: xtea and nop. If the KEY is not of the required
length it is used as an input to a hash function which can produce a key of the
required size.

e.g. dfu-tool encrypt firmware.dfu firmware.xdfu xtea deadbeef

decrypt FILENAME-IN FILENAME-OUT TYPE KEY
This command decrypts firmware data. Only the image contents are actually
modified, the DFU footer and DfuSe header are left unaltered. Possible values for
the destination TYPE include: xtea and nop. If the KEY is not of the required
length it is used as an input to a hash function which can produce a key of the
required size.

e.g. dfu-tool decrypt firmware.xdfu firmware.dfu xtea deadbeef

merge FILE-OUT FILE1 FILE2 [FILE3...]
This command merges multiple firmware files into one file. Although you can merge
files with the same ALT-ID or ALT-NAME this probably isn't what you want to do.

e.g. dfu-tool merge combined.dfu lib.dfu app.dfu

set-alt-setting FILE ALT-ID
This command modifies the alternative number on firmware file.

e.g. dfu-tool set-alt-setting firmware.dfu 1

set-alt-setting-name
This command modifies the alternative name on firmware file.

e.g. dfu-tool set-alt-setting-name firmware.dfu SRAM

set-metadata FILE KEY VALUE
This command adds or modifies existing metadata on a firmware file. NOTE: There is
only very limited metadata storage space in DFU files, so keys and values should be
kept as short as possible. In particular, the License value should be specified in
SPDX format.

e.g. dfu-tool set-metadata firmware.dfu Licence GPL-2.0+

set-vendor FILE VID
This command sets vendor ID on a firmware file that will be used to match specific
devices. Values of ffff will match any device vendor.

e.g. dfu-tool set-vendor firmware.dfu 273f

set-product FILE PID
This command sets the product ID on a firmware file that will be used to match
specific devices. Values of ffff will match any device product.

e.g. dfu-tool set-product firmware.dfu 1004

set-release FILE RELEASE
This command sets the release version on firmware file that will be used to match
specific devices. Values of ffff will match any device release.

e.g. dfu-tool set-release firmware.dfu ffff

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