Ubuntu – issues updating firmware using fwupdmgr update

aptfirmwarefwupdupdatesupgrade

I am using ubuntu 18 with a pc (asus motherboard)
and trying to update the firmware using this

After starting the service using those commands nothing happens

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo service fwupd start
sudo fwupdmgr refresh
sudo fwupdmgr update

Nothing happens

I also tried the following, and nothing happend

sudo fwupdmgr update -v
sudo fwupdmgr update --force
sudo fwupdmgr update --show-all-devices

Nothing happens, no output no nothing.
Ideas?

Best Answer

tldr; fwupdmgr get-updates should show you available firmware updates (from official channels) for all of your supported & connected devices.

If it shows you no output at all, it means that no updates were found (usually not published by the vendor) into the official channels (fwupd.org).

You can use fwupdmgr get-devices to get a list of updateable devices.

Also, if your device vendor has published a xxxxxxxx.cab file to be used to update from linux, you can use fwupdmgr install xxxxxxxx.cab to schedule the firmware update upon next reboot.

This was tested less than a week ago (2019-06-29) in a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga X1 3rd gen1. fwupdmgr get-updates shows highest BIOS version as 1.34, but I manually installed version 1.35 from a downloaded xxxxxxxx.cab file from Lenovo's support site.

Note: new firmware updates should also appear into updates section of gnome software app.

Hope it helps.