1DFU-TOOL(1) User Commands DFU-TOOL(1)
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6 dfu-tool - dfu-tool
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9 This manual page documents briefly the dfu-tool command.
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11 dfu-tool allows a user to write various kinds of firmware onto devices
12 supporting the USB Device Firmware Upgrade protocol. This tool can be
13 used to switch the device from the normal runtime mode to `DFU mode'
14 which allows the user to read and write firmware. Either the whole de‐
15 vice can be written in one operation, or individual `targets' can be
16 specified with the alternative name or number.
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18 All synchronous actions can be safely cancelled and on failure will re‐
19 turn errors with both a type and a full textual description. libdfu
20 supports DFU 1.0, DFU 1.1 and the ST DfuSe vendor extension, and han‐
21 dles many device `quirks' necessary for the real-world implementations
22 of DFU.
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24 Additionally dfu-tool can be used to convert firmware from various dif‐
25 ferent formats, or to modify details about the elements, images and
26 metadata contained inside the firmware file. For example, you can eas‐
27 ily convert DFU 1.1 firmware into the vendor-specific DfuSe format,
28 convert a Intel HEX file into a raw file padded to a specific size, or
29 add new copyright and licensing information to an existing file.
30 Fields such as the vendor and product IDs can be changed, and the
31 firmware elements can be encrypted and decrypted using various differ‐
32 ent methods. Merging two DfuSe files together is also possible, al‐
33 though specifying different alt-setting numbers before merging is a
34 good idea to avoid confusion.
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36 Although dfu-tool tries to provide a large number of easy-to-use com‐
37 mands, it may only be possible to do certain operations using the
38 libdfu library directly. This is easier than it sounds, as the library
39 is built with GObject Introspection support making it usable in many
40 languages such as C, Javascript and Python. Furthermore, using the li‐
41 brary is a good idea if you want to perform multiple operations on
42 large firmware files, for instance, converting from an Intel HEX file,
43 padding to a certain size, setting vendor and adding licensing informa‐
44 tion and then saving to a remote location.
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46 Failed to load quirks: Error creating directory /var/cache/fwupd: Per‐
47 mission denied
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51dfu-tool 1.5.9 April 2021 DFU-TOOL(1)