Intel® Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility

Intel® Ethernet Adapters and Devices User Guide

ID	Date	Version	Classification
705831	11/28/2024		Public

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Overview

The Intel® Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility, or BootUtil, is used to update configurations and program the PCI option ROM on the flash memory of supported Intel PCI and PCI-Express-based network adapters.

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility replaces existing utilities and provides the functionality of the older IBAUTIL, LANUTIL, and FLAUTIL. Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility supports all the adapters supported by the previous utilities.

Note:

Legacy iSCSI Boot and CLP images are not supported and cannot be loaded or configured.
Updating the adapter’s flash memory using Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility will erase any existing firmware image from the flash memory.
If your device is flashed with a discrete FCoE firmware (no other Option ROMs flashed), attempts to update your device will fail. This is expected. The data required for FCoE functionality upgrades is no longer part of the latest upgrade packages. The update will fail and FCoE functionality will continue to work.
If you update a device that is flashed with an FCoE-enabled combo image (for example, an image that contains the EFI driver, legacy PXE, and FCoE boot functionality), the Option ROM combination will change on update, usually to the same combination without FCoE capabilities. This is expected. The data required for FCoE functionality upgrades is no longer part of the latest upgrade packages. The update will succeed and FCoE functionality will be removed from your device.

Intel provides the following flash firmware in FLB file format for programming to the flash memory:

Intel® Boot Agent as PXE Option ROM for legacy BIOS http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/bootagent/
Network Connectivity, UEFI network driver http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-006120.htm

OEMs may provide custom flash firmware images for OEM network adapters. Please refer to the instructions given by OEMs.

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility allows the user to flash supported firmware to the adapter from the included BootIMG.FLB file. This option ROM includes PXE and UEFI, and the image is programmed to the flash memory at once. Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility will also build the required combo images for supported adapter and program those images to the flash, as well. Since both discrete and combo images are supported, the -bootenable command ONLY works on combo images.

PXE+EFI image combinations are supported for all OEM generic adapters, however support is limited to devices which support both technologies as discrete images. However, flash size is a limiting factor, as the image size can change without notice.

The BootIMG.FLB file is the container for all the Intel® boot Option ROMs. This file replaces the existing FLB files for PXE and EFI.

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility without command-line options will display a list of all supported Intel network ports in the system. Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility will also allow the user to enable or disable the flash memory on specific ports by using -FLASHENABLE or -FLASHDISABLE options in order to control access to the firmware from the system.

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility allows the user to individually set UEFI and PXE boot configurations using the -NIC=xx -=-<OPTION>=<VALUE> options.

Note:

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility displays up to 128 adapter ports.
No configuration settings are supported for the UEFI driver.
-NIC, -MACADDR, and -DEVID are mutually exclusive. You cannot use more than one of these options per command. Specifying more than one option will cause Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility to fail.
You cannot enable/disable 64-bit BAR addressing on Intel® Ethernet Controller X550 Series devices.
Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility may indicate that a device is in the “Pending Reboot” state. No update or configuration changes are possible on a device in this state. Please reboot your system.

Check the Intel Customer Support (http://support.intel.com) website for the latest information and component updates.

Note:

If the tool displays the error, Unable to load the driver. Please close all other applications and try again, you have a mix of old and new versions of the utility tool on your system.

Quit all open applications and retry your operation. If the issue persists:

Download the latest version of the utility tools.
Run the uninstall script to remove the old version of the tool driver.
Run the install script from the downloaded tools package.
Retry your operation. You may also need to download and install the latest Intel Ethernet driver or Intel® PROSet package for your device.

Supported Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows Server*
Linux* Kernel
Red Hat* Enterprise Linux*
SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server
openEuler* for AArch64 (only on Intel® Ethernet E810 Series)
UEFI
FreeBSD*

Installation

See Installing and Uninstalling Intel® Network Connection Tools for installation instructions.

Running the Utility

The syntax for issuing Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility command-line options is:

bootutil -[option] or -<OPTION>=<VALUE>

Using the /? option will display a list of supported command line options.

See Examples and Command Line Options below for more information.

Command Line Options

Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility accepts one executable option and its associated non-executable options in an execution. If conflicting executable options are specified, Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility exits with an error.

The options, where applicable, are listed in logical groups:

General Options
Power Management Options
Adapter Flash Enable/Disable Options
Flash Programming Options
PXE Boot Configuration Options

Note:

If you run Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility without any command-line options, the utility displays a list of all supported Intel network ports found in the system.

General Options

-?, -HELP: Displays a list of command-line options.

-ALL: Selects all supported network ports found in the system.

-64d: Disables 64-bit BAR (Base Address Register) addressing on the selected port. This restricts the system BIOS to assigning 32-bit BARs to the port.
-64e: Enables 64-bit BAR addressing on the selected port.

-BLINK: Blinks the LED on the selected port for ten seconds.

-DEVID=[Device ID]: Selects the network port specified by [Device ID]. [Device ID] is a 4-digit hexadecimal number, prepended by 0x.

-EXITCODES: Displays exit codes returned to the OS environment by Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility.
-E: Enumerates all supported network ports in the system.

-FILE=[FILENAME]: Specifies the file name for -SAVEIMAGE, -RESTOREIMAGE, -SAVECONFIG, -RESTORECONFIG, -UP or -UPDATE options.

-IMAGEVERSION, -IV: Displays the firmware image type and version number from the specified source. If no source is specified, displays the image type and version number from the local BootIMG.FLB file. Use -FILE to specify a different file. Use -NIC to specify a port. Use -ALL to display the firmware image types and version numbers of images loaded onto all ports in the system. If a port does not have an image loaded, or is not an Intel® Ethernet port, the port will not be included in the -ALL output.

-MACADDR=[MAC address string]: Selects the network port specified by [MAC address string]. [MAC address string] is a 12-digit number. Separators (: or -) are allowed but not required.
-NIC=XX: Selects a specific network port in the system.

-NODPL: Prevents Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility from displaying the PCI device location.

-O=[FILENAME]: Saves a list of all NICs and their MAC addresses to the specified file. Must be used with -E.

-P: Causes Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility to pause screen after displaying every 25th line. In pause mode, the last line of the screen will contain information that the screen has been paused and that the user can press Enter to continue.

Power Management Options

-WOLENABLE, -WOLE: Enables Wake on LAN functionality on the selected port.
-WOLDISABLE, -WOLD: Disables Wake on LAN functionality on the selected port.

Adapter Flash Enable/Disable Options

-BOOTENABLE=[PXE|DISABLED]

Selects flash firmware type to enable or disable on the selected port. The combo option ROM could have all capabilities. This command will NOT work on monolithic Option ROMs.

-BOOTENABLE=DISABLED disables PXE functionalities for legacy BIOS.

Note:

This manual command is not applicable to the UEFI network driver. The UEFI network driver is enabled by default and loaded automatically unless network ports are already used by other flash firmware.

-FLASHENABLE, -FE

Enables the capability to run flash firmware on the selected adapter.

Note:

This parameter is not supported on the following adapters:

Intel® Gigabit ET Quad Port Mezzanine Card
Intel® Ethernet X520 10GbE Dual Port KX4 Mezz
Intel® Ethernet X520 10GbE Dual Port KX4-KR Mezz

-FLASHDISABLE, -FD

Disables the capability to run flash firmware on the selected adapter.

Note:

This parameter is not supported on the following adapters:

Intel® Gigabit ET Quad Port Mezzanine Card
Intel® Ethernet X520 10GbE Dual Port KX4 Mezz
Intel® Ethernet X520 10GbE Dual Port KX4-KR Mezz

Flash Programming Options

-QUIET: Runs Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility without confirmation prompts. This option is used with -IMAGEVERSION, -UP, -UPDATE, -RESTOREIMAGE, or -HELP option.
-RESTOREIMAGE, -RI: Restores a previously-saved firmware image to the same network adapter using the -NIC option. The source file is specified by the -FILE option.
-SAVEIMAGE, -SI: Saves the existing firmware image in the flash memory of the adapter specified by the -NIC option to a disk file. The destination file is specified by the -FILE option.

-UP, -UPDATE=[ROMType] [-FILE=Filename]

Updates the flash memory of the adapter specified by the -NIC option with the given FLB flash firmware image file. If -QUIET is not specified, the user is prompted to confirm overwriting the existing firmware image before upgrading. If a file name is not provided, the utility looks for the default bootimg.FLB file which contains all image types.

The following examples use PXE, but could also be efi or efi64:

Bootutil -Nic=x -up=pxe
Bootutil -Nic=x -up=pxe -file=pxeimg.flb

If your adapter supports a combo option rom, the following command option automatically detects the supported combo image and programs the adapter with that image:

-up=combo

-up=combo up=pxe+efi is valid.

PXE Boot Configuration Options

All of these options can be used with -NIC or -ALL:

-DEFAULTCONFIG, -DEFCFG: Sets the PXE configuration of the selected device back to default settings.
-MODE: This parameter should not be used except as advised by Intel Support personnel.
-TITLEENABLE, -TLE: Enables Initial Title Message.
-TITLEDISABLE, -TLD: Disables Initial Title Message.

Examples

This section includes examples of how to enter some typical Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility command lines.

To get help descriptions:

BootUtil -?

To enable the flash firmware on the first network adapter for the system to be capable of executing the flash firmware:

BootUtil -NIC=1 -FLASHENABLE

To disable the flash firmware on all the network adapters:

BootUtil -ALL -FD

To display BootUtil FLB flash firmware types and versions:

BootUtil -IMAGEVERSION

To update all ports of a supported device with PXE, use either of the following:

BootUtil -UP=PXE -ALL
# Assumes input file is bootimg.flb

BootUtil -UP=PXE -ALL -FILE=BOOTIMG.FLB
# Uses an explicit user-specified file

To update a combo image on supported adapter (e.g., pxe+efi). This command will succeed if the PXE+EFI combination is supported on NIC #2. If not, an error is displayed to the user:

BootUtil -UP=Combo -NIC=2 -FILE=BOOTIMG.FLB

Note:

The -UP and -UPDATE commands are equivalent and interchangeable.

To enable PXE firmware on the third network port in the system:

BootUtil -BOOTENABLE=PXE -NIC=3

Note:

This command will work only if PXE is part of a combo Option ROM and not a discrete Option ROM.

To disable the firmware on the second network port in the system:

BootUtil -NIC=2 -BOOTENABLE=DISABLED

Exit Codes

BootUtil returns an exit code to the OS environment. Possible exit codes are listed in the following table:

Code Name	Value
0	All Intel Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility operations completed successfully
1	Bad command-line parameter
3	No supported network port detected 2 Invalid network port selected
4	FLASH operation failed
5	EEPROM read operation failed
6	EEPROM write operation failed
7	File content is missing or corrupt
8	Operator termination
9	LOM not supported for selected operation
10	Network port is not bootable
11	FLASH memory is disabled for flash firmware
12	FLASH memory too small for selected firmware
14	System memory allocation failed
15	File operation failed

Note:

EFI versions of this tool may report an incorrect error code when no adapter is installed. This is due to a known limitation in the UDK2015 UEFI Development Kit (UDK) build environment.