Richard Hughes, creator of the Packagekit project, actively participating in the development of gnome, presented the package fwupd 1.8.0 , offering a background process for organizing updating firmware and FWUPDMGR utility for firmware control, checking the appearance of new versions and loading firmware. The project code is written in the language of SI and is distributed under the license lgplv2.1. At the same time, it was announced to reach the LVFS project of the line of 50 million updates to firmware delivered to users.
The project provides OEM manufacturers and developers of firmware for loading firmware into a special centralized directory lvfs (Linux Vendor Firmware Service), which can be used in Linux distributions using FWUPD tools. Currently, the catalog is offered firmware for 829 types of devices (more than 4000 firmware) from 120 manufacturers . The use of a centralized catalog eliminates manufacturers from the need to form packages for distributions and allows you to transfer firmware in the archive “cab “with additional metadata, which are also used in the publication of firmware for Windows.
FWUPD is supported by both the automatic update mode, without the need to perform some action from the user, and the performance of the operation after confirmation or request of the user. FWUPD and LVFS are already used in RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian and many other distributions for automated firmware updating, and are also supported in GNOME Software and KDE Discover applications. At the same time, the FWUPD is not limited by desktop systems and can also be used to update firmware on smartphones, tablets, servers and Internet-wide devices.
In the new issue:
- Added a new attribute for CPU supported in the firmware protection mechanism hsi (host security ID).
- in libfwupdplugin Parisers of identifiers Coswid and USWID are added to the initial support SBOM (Firmware Software Bill of Materials) for firmware verification.
- Added new HSI attributes for support components AMD (AMD PSP).
- Added version of the version fwupd-efi (org.freedesktop.fwupd-efi).
- The ‘Fwupdmgr Install’ team provides the ability to install a given firmware version.
- The possibility of restarting the BMC controller (Baseboard Management Controller) after installing the firmware update.
).