2.1 Option Descriptions

AVRDUDE is a command line tool, used as follows:

avrdude -p partno options …

Command line options are used to control AVRDUDE’s behaviour. The following options are recognized:

-p partno

This option tells AVRDUDE what part (MCU) is connected to the programmer. The partno parameter is the part’s id listed in the configuration file. To see a list of currently supported MCUs use ? as partno, which will print the part ids and official part names. In connection with -v, this will also print a list of variant part names followed by an optional colon, the package code and some absolute maximum ratings. The part id, their official part name, any of the full variant part names or their initial part up to a dash can be used to specify a part with the -p option. If a part is unknown to AVRDUDE, it means that there is no config file entry for that part, but it can be added to the configuration file if you have the Atmel datasheet so that you can enter the programming specifications. If -p ? is specified with a specific programmer, see -c below, then only those parts are output that the programmer expects to be able to handle, together with the programming interface(s) that can be used in that combination. In reality there can be deviations from this list, particularly if programming is directly via a bootloader. Currently, the following MCU types are understood:

(*) The AT90S2323 and ATtiny22 use the same algorithm.

(**) Flash addressing above 128 KB is not supported by all programming hardware. Known to work are jtag2, stk500v2, and bit-bang programmers.

(***) The ATtiny11 can only be programmed in high-voltage serial mode.

(****) The ISP programming protocol of the AT90S1200 differs in subtle ways from that of other AVRs. Thus, not all programmers support this device. Known to work are all direct bitbang programmers, and all programmers talking the STK500v2 protocol.

-p wildcard/flags

Run developer options for MCUs that are matched by wildcard. Whilst their main use is for developers some flags can be of utility for users, e.g., avrdude -p m328p/S outputs AVRDUDE’s understanding of ATmega328P MCU properties; for more information run avrdude -p x/h.

-b baudrate

Override the RS-232 connection baud rate specified in the respective programmer’s entry of the configuration file.

-B bitclock

Specify the bit clock period for the JTAG, PDI, TPI, UPDI, or ISP interface. The value is a floating-point number in microseconds. Alternatively, the value might be suffixed with "Hz", "kHz" or "MHz" in order to specify the bit clock frequency rather than a period. Some programmers default their bit clock value to a 1 microsecond bit clock period, suitable for target MCUs running at 4 MHz clock and above. Slower MCUs need a correspondingly higher bit clock period. Some programmers reset their bit clock value to the default value when the programming software signs off, whilst others store the last used bit clock value. It is recommended to always specify the bit clock if read/write speed is important. You can use the ’default_bitclock’ keyword in your ~/.config/avrdude/avrdude.rc or ~/.avrduderc configuration file to assign a default value to keep from having to specify this option on every invocation.

Note that some official Microchip programmers store the bitclock setting and will continue to use it until a different value is provided. This applies to "2nd gen" programmers (AVRISPmkII, AVR Dragon, JTAG ICE mkII, STK600) and "3rd gen"programmers (JTAGICE3, Atmel ICE, Power Debugger). "4th gen" programmers (PICkit 4, MPLAB SNAP) will store the last user-specified bitclock until the programmer is disconnected from the computer.

-c programmer-id

Specify the programmer to be used. AVRDUDE knows about several common programmers. Use this option to specify which one to use. The programmer-id parameter is the programmer’s id listed in the configuration file. Specify -c ? to list all programmers in the configuration file. If you have a programmer that is unknown to AVRDUDE, and the programmer is controlled via the PC parallel port, there’s a good chance that it can be easily added to the configuration file without any code changes to AVRDUDE. Simply copy an existing entry and change the pin definitions to match that of the unknown programmer. If -c ? is specified with a specific part, see -p above, then only those programmers are output that expect to be able to handle this part, together with the programming interface(s) that can be used in that combination. In reality there can be deviations from this list, particularly if programming is directly via a bootloader. Currently, the following programmer ids are understood and supported:

-c wildcard/flags

Run developer options for programmers that are matched by wildcard. Whilst their main use is for developers some flags can be of utility for users, e.g., avrdude -c usbtiny/S shows AVRDUDE’s understanding of usbtiny’s properties; for more information run avrdude -c x/h.

-C config-file

Use the specified config file for configuration data. This file contains all programmer and part definitions that AVRDUDE knows about. If not specified, AVRDUDE looks for the configuration file in the following two locations:

1. <directory from which application loaded>/../etc/avrdude.conf
2. <directory from which application loaded>/avrdude.conf

If not found there, the lookup procedure becomes platform dependent. On FreeBSD and Linux, AVRDUDE looks at /usr/local/etc/avrdude.conf. See Appendix A for the method of searching on Windows.

If config-file is written as +filename then this file is read after the system wide and user configuration files. This can be used to add entries to the configuration without patching your system wide configuration file. It can be used several times, the files are read in same order as given on the command line.

-A

Disable the automatic removal of trailing-0xFF sequences in file input that is to be programmed to flash and in AVR reads from flash memory. Normally, trailing 0xFFs can be discarded, as flash programming requires the memory be erased to 0xFF beforehand. -A should be used when the programmer hardware, or bootloader software for that matter, does not carry out chip erase and instead handles the memory erase on a page level. The popular Arduino bootloader exhibits this behaviour; for this reason -A is engaged by default when specifying -c arduino.

-D

Disable auto erase for flash. When the -U option with flash memory is specified, avrdude will perform a chip erase before starting any of the programming operations, since it generally is a mistake to program the flash without performing an erase first. This option disables that. Auto erase is not used for ATxmega devices as these devices can use page erase before writing each page so no explicit chip erase is required. Note however that any page not affected by the current operation will retain its previous contents. Setting -D implies -A.

-e

Causes a chip erase to be executed. This will reset the contents of the flash ROM and EEPROM to the value ‘0xff’, and clear all lock bits. Except for ATxmega devices which can use page erase, it is basically a prerequisite command before the flash ROM can be reprogrammed again. The only exception would be if the new contents would exclusively cause bits to be programmed from the value ‘1’ to ‘0’. Note that in order to reprogram EERPOM cells, no explicit prior chip erase is required since the MCU provides an auto-erase cycle in that case before programming the cell.

-E exitspec[,…]

By default, AVRDUDE leaves the parallel port in the same state at exit as it has been found at startup. This option modifies the state of the ‘/RESET’ and ‘Vcc’ lines the parallel port is left at, according to the exitspec arguments provided, as follows:

reset

The ‘/RESET’ signal will be left activated at program exit, that is it will be held low, in order to keep the MCU in reset state afterwards. Note in particular that the programming algorithm for the AT90S1200 device mandates that the ‘/RESET’ signal is active before powering up the MCU, so in case an external power supply is used for this MCU type, a previous invocation of AVRDUDE with this option specified is one of the possible ways to guarantee this condition. reset is supported by the linuxspi and flip2 programmer options, as well as all parallel port based programmers.

noreset

The ‘/RESET’ line will be deactivated at program exit, thus allowing the MCU target program to run while the programming hardware remains connected. noreset is supported by the linuxspi and flip2 programmer options, as well as all parallel port based programmers.

vcc

This option will leave those parallel port pins active (i. e. high) that can be used to supply ‘Vcc’ power to the MCU.

novcc

This option will pull the ‘Vcc’ pins of the parallel port down at program exit.

d_high

This option will leave the 8 data pins on the parallel port active (i. e. high).

d_low

This option will leave the 8 data pins on the parallel port inactive (i. e. low).

Multiple exitspec arguments can be separated with commas.

-F

Normally, AVRDUDE tries to verify that the device signature read from the part is reasonable before continuing. Since it can happen from time to time that a device has a broken (erased or overwritten) device signature but is otherwise operating normally, this options is provided to override the check. Also, for programmers like the Atmel STK500 and STK600 which can adjust parameters local to the programming tool (independent of an actual connection to a target controller), this option can be used together with ‘-t’ to continue in terminal mode. Moreover, the option allows to continue despite failed initialization of connection between a programmer and a target.

-i delay

For bitbang-type programmers, delay for approximately delay microseconds between each bit state change. If the host system is very fast, or the target runs off a slow clock (like a 32 kHz crystal, or the 128 kHz internal RC oscillator), this can become necessary to satisfy the requirement that the ISP clock frequency must not be higher than 1/4 of the CPU clock frequency. This is implemented as a spin-loop delay to allow even for very short delays. On Unix-style operating systems, the spin loop is initially calibrated against a system timer, so the number of microseconds might be rather realistic, assuming a constant system load while AVRDUDE is running. On Win32 operating systems, a preconfigured number of cycles per microsecond is assumed that might be off a bit for very fast or very slow machines.

-l logfile

Use logfile rather than stderr for diagnostics output. Note that initial diagnostic messages (during option parsing) are still written to stderr anyway.

-n

No-write: disables writing data to the MCU whilst processing -U (useful for debugging AVRDUDE). The terminal mode continues to write to the device.

-O

Perform a RC oscillator run-time calibration according to Atmel application note AVR053. This is only supported on the STK500v2, AVRISP mkII, and JTAG ICE mkII hardware. Note that the result will be stored in the EEPROM cell at address 0.

-P port

Use port to identify the device to which the programmer is attached. Normally, the default parallel port is used, but if the programmer type normally connects to the serial port, the default serial port will be used. See Appendix A, Platform Dependent Information, to find out the default port names for your platform. If you need to use a different parallel or serial port, use this option to specify the alternate port name.

On Win32 operating systems, the parallel ports are referred to as lpt1 through lpt3, referring to the addresses 0x378, 0x278, and 0x3BC, respectively. If the parallel port can be accessed through a different address, this address can be specified directly, using the common C language notation (i. e., hexadecimal values are prefixed by 0x).

For the JTAG ICE mkII, if AVRDUDE has been built with libusb support, port may alternatively be specified as usb[:serialno]. In that case, the JTAG ICE mkII will be looked up on USB. If serialno is also specified, it will be matched against the serial number read from any JTAG ICE mkII found on USB. The match is done after stripping any existing colons from the given serial number, and right-to-left, so only the least significant bytes from the serial number need to be given. For a trick how to find out the serial numbers of all JTAG ICEs attached to USB, see Example Command Line Invocations.

As the AVRISP mkII device can only be talked to over USB, the very same method of specifying the port is required there.

For the USB programmer "AVR-Doper" running in HID mode, the port must be specified as avrdoper. Libhidapi support is required on Unix and Mac OS but not on Windows. For more information about AVR-Doper see http://www.obdev.at/avrusb/avrdoper.html.

For the USBtinyISP, which is a simplistic device not implementing serial numbers, multiple devices can be distinguished by their location in the USB hierarchy. See the respective See section Troubleshooting entry for examples.

For the XBee programmer the target MCU is to be programmed wirelessly over a ZigBee mesh using the XBeeBoot bootloader. The ZigBee 64-bit address for the target MCU’s own XBee device must be supplied as a 16-character hexadecimal value as a port prefix, followed by the @ character, and the serial device to connect to a second directly contactable XBee device associated with the same mesh (with a default baud rate of 9600). This may look similar to: 0013a20000000001dev/tty.serial.

For diagnostic purposes, if the target MCU with an XBeeBoot bootloader is connected directly to the serial port, the 64-bit address field can be omitted. In this mode the default baud rate will be 19200.

For programmers that attach to a serial port using some kind of higher level protocol (as opposed to bit-bang style programmers), port can be specified as net:host:port. In this case, instead of trying to open a local device, a TCP network connection to (TCP) port on host is established. Square brackets may be placed around host to improve readability for numeric IPv6 addresses (e.g. net:[2001:db8::42]:1337). The remote endpoint is assumed to be a terminal or console server that connects the network stream to a local serial port where the actual programmer has been attached to. The port is assumed to be properly configured, for example using a transparent 8-bit data connection without parity at 115200 Baud for a STK500.

Note: The ability to handle IPv6 hostnames and addresses is limited to Posix systems (by now).

-q

Disable (or quell) output of the progress bar while reading or writing to the device. Specify it a second time for even quieter operation.

-s, -u

These options used to control the obsolete "safemode" feature which is no longer present. They are silently ignored for backwards compatibility.

-T cmd

Run terminal line cmd when it is its turn in relation to other -t interactive terminals, -T terminal commands and -U memory operations. Except for the simplest of terminal commands the argument cmd will most likely need to be set in quotes, see your OS shell manual for details. See below for a detailed description of all terminal commands.

-t

Tells AVRDUDE to run an interactive terminal when it is its turn in relation to other -t interactive terminals, -T terminal commands and -U memory operations.

-U memory:op:filename[:format]

Perform a memory operation when it is its turn in relation to other -t interactive terminals, -T terminal commands and -U memory operations. The memory field specifies the memory type to operate on. Use the ‘-T part’ option on the command line or the part command in the interactive terminal to display all the memory types supported by a particular device.

Typically, a device’s memory configuration at least contains the memory types flash, eeprom, signature and lock, which is sometimes known as lockbits. The signature memory contains the three device signature bytes, which should be, but not always are, unique for the part. The lock memory of one or four bytes typically details whether or not external reading/writing of the flash memory, or parts of it, is allowed. Parts will also typically have fuse bytes, which are read/write memories for configuration of the device and calibration memories that typically contain read-only factory calibration values.

Classic devices may have the following memory types in addition to eeprom, flash, signature and lock:

calibration

One or more bytes of RC oscillator calibration data

efuse

Extended fuse byte

fuse

Fuse byte in devices that have only a single fuse byte

hfuse

High fuse byte

lfuse

Low fuse byte

usersig

Three extra flash pages for firmware settings; this memory is not erased during a chip erase. Only some classic parts, ATmega(64|128|256|644|1284|2564)RFR2, have a usersig memory. Usersig is different to flash in the sense that it can neither be accessed with ISP serial programming nor written to by bootloaders. AVRDUDE offers JTAG programming of classic-part usersig memories. As with all flash-type memories the -U option can only write 0-bits but not 1-bits. Hence, usersig needs to be erased before a file can be uploaded to this memory region, e.g., using -T "erase usersig" -U usersig:w:parameters.hex:i

ATxmega devices have the following memory types in addition to eeprom, flash, signature and lock:

application

Application flash area

apptable

Application table flash area

boot

Boot flash area

fuse0

A.k.a. jtaguid: JTAG user ID for some devices

fuse1

Watchdog configuration

fuse6

Fault detection action configuration TC4/5 for ATxmega E series parts

fuseN

Other fuse bytes of ATxmega devices, where N is 2, 4 or 5, for system configuration

prodsig

Production signature (calibration) area

usersig

Additional flash memory page that can be used for firmware settings; this memory is not erased during a chip erase

Modern 8-bit AVR devices have the following memory types in addition to eeprom, flash, signature and lock:

fuse0

A.k.a. wdtcfg: watchdog configuration

fuse1

A.k.a. bodcfg: brownout detection configuration

fuse2

A.k.a. osccfg: oscillator configuration

fuse4

A.k.a. tcd0cfg (not all devices): timer counter type D configuration

fuse5

A.k.a. syscfg0: system configuration 0

fuse6

A.k.a. syscfg1: system configuration 1

fuse7

A.k.a. append or codesize: either the end of the application code section or the code size in blocks of 256/512 bytes

fuse8

A.k.a. bootend or bootsize: end of the boot section or the boot size in blocks of 256/512 bytes

fuses

A "logical" memory of 9 bytes containing all fuseN of a part, which can be used to program all fuses at the same time

osc16err

Two bytes typically describing the 16 MHz oscillator frequency error at 3 V and 5 V, respectively

osc20err

Two bytes typically describing the 20 MHz oscillator frequency error at 3 V and 5 V, respectively

osccal16

Two oscillator calibration bytes for 16 MHz

osccal20

Two oscillator calibration bytes for 20 MHz

prodsig

Production signature (calibration) area

sernum

Serial number with a unique ID for the pary (10 bytes)

tempsense

Temperature sensor calibration values

userrow

Extra page of EEPROM memory that can be used for firmware settings; this memory is not erased during a chip erase

The op field specifies what operation to perform:

r

read the specified device memory and write to the specified file

w

read the specified file and write it to the specified device memory

v

read the specified device memory and the specified file and perform a verify operation

The filename field indicates the name of the file to read or write. The format field is optional and contains the format of the file to read or write. Possible values are:

i

Intel Hex

I

Intel Hex with comments on download and tolerance of checksum errors on upload

s

Motorola S-record

r

raw binary; little-endian byte order, in the case of the flash ROM data

e

ELF (Executable and Linkable Format), the final output file from the linker; currently only accepted as an input file

m

immediate mode; actual byte values are specified on the command line, separated by commas or spaces in place of the filename field of the ‘-U’ option. This is useful for programming fuse bytes without having to create a single-byte file or enter terminal mode.

a

auto detect; valid for input only, and only if the input is not provided at stdin.

d

decimal; this and the following formats generate one line of output for the respective memory section, forming a comma-separated list of the values. This can be particularly useful for subsequent processing, like for fuse bit settings.

h

hexadecimal; each value will get the string 0x prepended.

o

octal; each value will get a 0 prepended unless it is less than 8 in which case it gets no prefix.

b

binary; each value will get the string 0b prepended.

When used as input, the m, d, h, o and b formats will use the same code for reading lists of numbers separated by white space and/or commas. The read routine handles decimal, hexadecimal, octal or binary numbers on a number-by-number basis, and the list of numbers can therefore be of mixed type. In fact the syntax, is the same as for data used by the terminal write command, i.e., the file’s input data can also be 2-byte short integers, 4-byte long integers or 8-byte long long integers, 4-byte floating point numbers, 8-byte double precision numbers, C-type strings with a terminating nul or C-like characters such as '\t'. Numbers are written as little endian to memory. When using 0x hexadecimal or 0b binary input leading zeros are used to determine the size of the integer, e.g., 0x002a will occupy two bytes and write a 0x2a to memory followed by 0x00, while 0x01234 will occupy 4 bytes. See the description of the terminal write command for more details.

In absence of an explicit file format, the default is to use auto detection for input files, and raw binary format for output files. Note that if filename contains a colon as penultimate character the format field is no longer optional since the last character would otherwise be misinterpreted as format.

When reading any kind of flash memory area (including the various sub-areas in Xmega devices), the resulting output file will be truncated to not contain trailing 0xFF bytes which indicate unprogrammed (erased) memory. Thus, if the entire memory is unprogrammed, this will result in an output file that has no contents at all. This behaviour can be overridden with the -A option.

As an abbreviation, the form -U filename is equivalent to specifying -U flash:w:filename:a. This will only work if filename does not have a pair of colons in it that sandwich a single character as otherwise the first part might be interpreted as memory, and the single character as memory operation.

-v

Enable verbose output. More -v options increase verbosity level.

-V

Disable automatic verify check when uploading data with -U.

-x extended_param

Pass extended_param to the chosen programmer implementation as an extended parameter. The interpretation of the extended parameter depends on the programmer itself. See below for a list of programmers accepting extended parameters or issue avrdude -x help ... to see the extended options of the chosen programmer.

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