This project provides the pieces needed to flash an industry standard UEFI capsule in a Linux OS. It also aims to be compatible with some implementation decisions that were made in Windows.
The following binaries are produced:
libfwup
library providing APIs to do UEFI updates for other applicationsfwupdate
command line toolfwup.efi
EFI application used for flashing the update from EFI.
UEFI capsule updates are not actually flashed within Linux. They're staged for update to be installed on the next boot.
- A higher level tool such as fwupd will consume a .CAB file.
- That tool will use libfwup from this project to stage the updates on the system.
libfwup
will copy the payload to the EFI system partition.libfwup
will create EFI NVRAM entries pointing to the correct payload on the EFI system partition.libfwup
will create a new EFI Boot entry to launch the firmware updating EFI application.libfwup
will set theBootNext
variable to run that application on next boot.- The user will reboot the system.
- The
fwup.efi
application will examine EFI NVRAM entries to find capsules previously staged. - The
fwup.efi
applciation will call the BIOSUpdateCapsule()
method to flash the capsules. - The BIOS will flash the capsules and then reboot back into the OS.
UEFI capsule updates are typically distributed by services such as LVFS in .CAB format. The command line tool provided by this project works directly on the
payload stored in the .CAB.
Most users should apply UEFI capsule updates with a higher level tool such as fwupd that uses the library libfwup
that is provided by this project.
The following dependencies are needed to compile:
- libpopt
- efivar (>=33)
- gnu-efi (>= 3.0.2)
- elfutils
Optionally if libsmbios is present some additional features on Dell systems can be enabled as well.
Optionally set the EFI system partition mount point. If not configured it will default to /boot/efi
# git config fwupdate.espmountdir $DIRECTORY
Set the EFI subdirectory directory that EFI binaries are installed into.
# git config fwupdate.efidir $DIRECTORY
This usually refers to the OS distributor. For example on Ubuntu it's set to ubuntu
Run the build command
# make
Run the install command
# make install
Some distributions don't use the same paths for the dependencies as in Make.defaults.
For example on Debian and Ubuntu you need to override GNUEFIDIR
to the correct path.
Checking if UEFI capsule updates are supported:
# fwupdate --supported
Checking which ESRT GUIDs are on the system:
# fwupdate --list
Display details of all ESRT entries:
# fwupdate --info
Applying a payload:
# fwupdate --apply=<guid> <payload>
Enable firmware updates on supported Dell systems (if compiled with libsmbios):
# fwupate --enable