A whole-flash dump of an ESP32-family chip was read as its bootloader
image, with the partition table, apps and data left as undescribed bytes,
or refused when it began with erased flash. Read it as an esp-flash-image
container instead.
The partition table is decoded as esp_partition_table_verify accepts it
and is found at the caller's partition_table_offset, at the default
0x8000, or by scanning 0x1000-aligned sectors for a table whose MD5
verifies, which the inventory reports as derived. The bootloader is
located at its chip's ROM bootloader offset. Each partition is an entry
with its declaration in flat format_metadata; the bootloader and app
partitions carry ESP image facts from the existing streaming decoder; the
otadata records are reported with a selection derived without rollback or
anti-rollback, and the running partition stays unknown. One unreadable
partition does not hide the others, and extraction writes every partition,
nvs_keys included, as ordinary data.
Flash layouts are detected before single ESP images. The scan runs only
when an ESP image sits at a ROM bootloader offset, and is refused when a
bootloader at another chip's offset shows that the dump does not start at
flash address 0. open_binary gains flash_offset and partition_table_offset,
which require format esp-flash-image and are part of the snapshot target
identity; the CLI takes them with --target-format esp-flash-image.
Comparison treats a partition's label, type, subtype, range and flags as
its declaration.
Entrpi
b2e69728e3