Richard Hughes, creator of the PackageKit project and an active contributor to GNOME, announced the release of fwupd 1.8.0, which provides a background process for managing firmware updates and a utility called fwupdmgr for managing firmware, checking for new versions, and downloading firmware. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the LGPLv2.1 license. At the same time, it was announced that the LVFS project had reached the milestone of 50 million firmware updates delivered to users.
The project provides OEMs and firmware developers with a service for uploading firmware to a special centralized LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service) directory, which can be used in Linux distributions using the fwupd toolkit. Currently, the catalog offers firmware for 829 types of devices (more than 4000 firmware) from 120 manufacturers. Using a centralized directory eliminates the need for manufacturers to create packages for distributions and allows them to transfer firmware in a β.cabβ archive with additional metadata, which is also used when publishing firmware for Windows.
fwupd supports both automatic firmware update mode, without the need for any action on the part of the user, and execution of the operation after confirmation or request by the user. Fwupd and LVFS are already used in RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian and many other distributions for automated firmware updates, and are also supported in GNOME Software and KDE Discover applications. However, fwupd is not limited to desktop systems and can also be used to update firmware on smartphones, tablets, servers and Internet of Things devices.
In the new release:
- Added a new attribute for CPUs supported in the HSI (Host Security ID) firmware protection mechanism.
- CoSWID and uSWID identifier parsers have been added to libfwupdplugin, providing initial support for SBoM (Firmware Software Bill of Materials) for firmware verification.
- Added new HSI attributes for AMD platform support components (AMD PSP).
- Added fwupd-efi version detection (org.freedesktop.fwupd-efi).
- The 'fwupdmgr install' command provides the ability to install a specified firmware version.
- It is possible to restart the BMC controller (Baseboard Management Controller) after installing a firmware update.
Source: opennet.ru