fwupd - ArchWiki

# fwupd

From ArchWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Related articles

- Secure Boot
- Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

fwupd is a simple daemon allowing to update some devices firmware, including UEFI BIOS for several machines.

Supported devices are listed here and more are to come.

## Installation

Install fwupd.

See #Setup for UEFI BIOS upgrade if you intend such an use.

### Graphical front-ends

Certain desktop environments front-end solutions have built-in fwupd support:

- GNOME Software — Will check for updates periodically and automatically download firmwares in the background on GNOME. After a firmware has been downloaded a popup will be displayed in Gnome Software to perform the update.

  https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software || gnome-software

- KDE Discover — Software center used with Plasma. With the release of KDE Plasma 5.14, a new fwupd backend has been implemented in KDE Discover for firmware updates. These firmware updates are shown with other system updates.

  https://userbase.kde.org/Discover || discover

## Usage

To display all devices detected by fwupd:

    $ fwupdmgr get-devices

Note: Listed devices may not be updatable through fwupd (e.g. Intel integrated graphics). Alternative vendor solutions may be provided instead.

To download the latest metadata from LVFS:

    $ fwupdmgr refresh

To list updates available for any devices on the system:

    $ fwupdmgr get-updates

To install updates:

    $ fwupdmgr update

Note:

- Updates that can be applied live will be done immediately.
- Updates that run at bootup will be staged for the next reboot.
- The root user may be required to perform certain device updates.

## Setup for UEFI BIOS upgrade

Warning: An update to your UEFI firmware may discard the current bootloader installation. It may be necessary to recreate the NVRAM entry (for example using efibootmgr) after the firmware update has been installed successful.

The following requirements should be met:

1. Make sure you are booted in UEFI mode, it will not work in legacy boot mode.
2. Verify your EFI variables are accessible.
3. Mount your EFI system partition (ESP) properly. `esp` is used to denote the mountpoint in this section.

### Copy Fwupd to ESP

The fwupd files are not copied over to the ESP when fwupd is installed or upgraded so we need to do this manually.

    cp -a /usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi esp/efi/

It might be desirable to automate this using a pacman hook so that on future fwupd installs/updates it will do so automatically:

    /etc/pacman.d/hooks/fwupd-to-esp.hook

    [Trigger]
    Operation = Install
    Operation = Upgrade
    Type = File
    Target = usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi

    [Action]
    When = PostTransaction
    Exec = /usr/bin/cp -a /usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi esp/efi/

You can now `$ fwupd refresh` and `$ fwupd update`. It will ask to reboot and should now automatically reboot into the firmware updater.

### Secure Boot

Currently, fwupd relies on shim to chainload the fwupd EFI binary on systems with Secure Boot enabled. For this to work, shim has to be installed correctly.

#### Using your own keys

Alternatively, you have to manually sign the UEFI executable used to perform upgrades, which is located in `/usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi`. The signed UEFI executable is expected in `/usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi.signed`. Using sbsigntools, this can be achieved by running:

    # sbsign --key <keyfile> --cert <certfile> /usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi

To automatically sign this file when installed or upgraded, a Pacman hook can be used:

    /etc/pacman.d/hooks/sign-fwupd-secureboot.hook

    [Trigger]
    Operation = Install
    Operation = Upgrade
    Type = File
    Target = usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi

    [Action]
    When = PostTransaction
    Exec = /usr/bin/sbsign --key <keyfile> --cert <certfile> /usr/lib/fwupd/efi/fwupdx64.efi
    Depends = sbsigntools

Make sure to replace `<keyfile>` and `<certfile>` with the corresponding paths of your keys.

Finally, you have to change the line containing `RequireShimForSecureBoot` in `/etc/fwupd/uefi.conf` to `RequireShimForSecureBoot=false`.

Check out [1] for more information discussing this.

Category:

- Hardware