fwupd
This project aims to make updating firmware on Linux automatic, safe, and reliable.
Additional information is available at the website.
Where to get help?
Compiling
See Building and Debugging for how to build the fwupd development environment.
[!TIP]
In most cases, end users should not compile fwupd from scratch; it's a
complicated project with dozens of dependencies (and as many configuration options)
and there's just too many things that can go wrong.
Users should just have fwupd installed and updated by their distro, managed and
tested by the package maintainer.
The distribution will have also done some testing with how fwupd interacts with
other software on your system, for instance using GNOME Software.
Installing fwupd using Snap
or using Flatpak might be
useful to update a specific device on the command line that needs a bleeding
edge fwupd version, but it should not be considered as a replacement to the
distro-provided system version.
Static analysis
If you're developing code for fwupd, you may use a number of tools for static
analysis during development. Some checks are set up in CI to ensure code
quality. So you don't necessarily need to run these checks locally. In some
instances like false positives, it can also be legitimate to suppress a check.
Using clang-tidy
Rules are defined in the .clang-tidy file in the repository. Meson
automatically provides targets to run clang-tidy on all files in the build.
For this purpose, depending on your environment, you may also want to ensure
you're setting CC=clang during meson setup for better results.
meson setup build
ninja -C build
ninja -C build clang-tidy
Additionally, there is also a target that will try to apply automatic fixes to
source files where possible.
ninja -C build clang-tidy-fix
Using gcc -fanalyzer
GCC can also provide static analysis. To enable this scan, fwupd provides a
separate Meson option.
meson setup build -Dstatic_analysis=true
ninja -C build
Using Tartan
Tartan is a LLVM
static analysis plugin built to analyze GLib code. After installation, it can be
run using:
mkdir build-tartan
CC=clang-18 meson ../
SCANBUILD=../contrib/tartan.sh ninja scan-build
LVFS
This project is configured by default to download firmware from the Linux Vendor
Firmware Service (LVFS).
This service is available to all OEMs and firmware creators who would like to make
their firmware available to Linux users.
You can find more information about the technical details of creating a firmware
capsule in the hardware vendors section of the fwupd website.
Basic usage flow (command line)
If you have a device with firmware supported by fwupd, this is how you can check
for updates and apply them using fwupd's command line tools.
# fwupdmgr get-devices
This will display all devices detected by fwupd.
# fwupdmgr refresh
This will download the latest metadata from LVFS.
# fwupdmgr get-updates
If updates are available for any devices on the system, they'll be displayed.
# fwupdmgr update
This will download and apply all updates for your system.
- Updates that can be applied live will be done immediately.
- Updates that run at boot-up will be staged for the next reboot.
You can find more information about the update workflow in the end
users section of the fwupd website.
Passim
If the Passim project is also installed
and enabled, fwupd will re-publish the downloaded metadata file to be served on 0.0.0.0:27500
by default.
Other clients on the same network can make use of this via mDNS/LLMNR to reduce network bandwidth
to configured remotes.
To disable this functionality either set P2pPolicy=none in /etc/fwupd/daemon.conf, uninstall
the passim package or use systemctl mask passim.service on the terminal.
Reporting status
fwupd will encourage users to report both successful and failed updates back
to LVFS. This is an optional feature, but encouraged as it provides valuable
feedback to LVFS administrators and OEM developers regarding firmware update
process efficacy.
The privacy policy regarding this data can be viewed on the lvfs readthedocs site.
To report the status of an update, run:
# fwupdmgr report-history
Only updates that were distributed from the LVFS will be reported to the LVFS.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
