nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

RE: nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

Simon — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:49:21 GMT

I talked to a developer internally and got informed this is a bug. An internal ticket is created. I'll keep you updated.

RE: nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

erik.johnson — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 19:46:00 GMT

Hi Simon,

Sounds good!

One additional thing I've found that might make testing it on your end a little easier (won't need to deal with flashing a HEX file) is that the behavior also exists with trying to erase a page:

nrfjprog.exe --erasepage 0xb0000
Erasing addresses 0xB0000 to 0xB0FFF.
ERROR: The operation attempted is unavailable due to readback protection in
ERROR: your device. Please use --recover to unlock the device.

But I can actually dump the contents of the entire page out with the read:

nrfjprog.exe --memrd 0xb0000 --n 0x1000
0x000B0000: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   |................|
0x000B0010: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   |................|
0x000B0020: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   |................|
0x000B0030: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   |................|
0x000B0040: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   |................|

So there appears to be some check done in the --erasepage and --program operations that isn't done with --memrd (or --memwr for that matter).

RE: nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

Simon — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:44:57 GMT

Hello Erik,

I'll just inform you that I'll look into this the next couple of days.

RE: nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

erik.johnson — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:51:05 GMT

Well, we just have a Secure firmware image that writes NRF_UICR->SECUREAPPROTECT to prevent Secure debugger access. We also have a Non-Secure firmware image running in the region that the Secure firmware sets up (NRF_SPU_S->FLASHREGION).

RE: nrfjprog still not quite flashing HEX files in Non-Secure flash

Simon — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 06:38:27 GMT

I was not able to reproduce this. Could you give a detailed step-by-step on how to reproduce it?

Best regards,

Simon