Can't update UEFI firmware on Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 14 (20FY) with fwupdmgr - does not apply update after reboot

Bug #1807526 reported by Joaquín Ignacio Aramendía
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
efivar (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
Cosmic
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned
Disco
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

A couple of days ago Software Manager notifies me about a UEFI firmware update when clicking it, nothing happens.

I reboot and again it notifies me of the same update (apparently it didn't apply). So I try to resort to fwupdmgr and I type in:

~$ sudo fwupdmgr update
Downloading 184.55.3510 for UEFI Device Firmware...
Decompressing… [***************************************]
Authenticating… [***************************************]
Updating UEFI Device Firmware from 176.0.1202 to 184.55.3510… ]
Scheduling… [***************************************]

An update requires a reboot to complete. Restart now? [Y|n]:

So apparently there is a reboot step to update the firmware. I answer 'yes' to reboot. After that the laptop reboots a couple times. The first one seems to execute a bootloader called 'fwupdx64.efi' or something and finds a file under /EFI/ubuntu/fw, seemingly good.

Then after that reboot, the screen goes blank for a moment and the laptop reboots again normally. After loggin in again, the device shows the old firmware version number and the Software Manager again notifies me about the update.

This is the output of the device if I type in fwupdmgr get-devices

UEFI Device Firmware
  DeviceId: aff24b50c0a8c292c6c2a81d3827c36d7a86f62a
  Guid: 03d3297b-3851-4379-95ad-12e21a96c80a
  Guid: 936fb33c-f3ff-5214-b7d0-915ea8c8b84c
  Plugin: uefi
  Flags: internal|updatable|require-ac|supported|registered|needs-reboot
  Version: 176.0.1202
  VersionLowest: 176.0.1202
  Icon: audio-card
  Created: 2018-12-08
  Modified: 2018-12-08
  UpdateState: needs-reboot

First thing I came across is that the firmware is detected as a Thinkpad T460s and mine is a Yoga 14 20FY (I know Lenovo uses almost same hardware on most of it's Thinkpad line) so maybe the update is not for this laptop, but fwupdmgr recognizing it as such seems odd.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: fwupd 1.1.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-12.13-generic 4.18.17
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Dec 8 15:33:01 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-18 (111 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Budgie 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725.1)
SourcePackage: fwupd
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to cosmic on 2018-10-20 (49 days ago)

Revision history for this message
Joaquín Ignacio Aramendía (samsagax) wrote :
information type: Private Security → Public
Revision history for this message
Joaquín Ignacio Aramendía (samsagax) wrote :

Seems this problem was reported already on GitHub (https://github.com/hughsie/fwupd/issues/822)

The solution is to update efivar to version 37. Current Ubuntu 18.10 has efivar 34.

Would it be updated?

Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) wrote :

No plans to update to efivar 37 in cosmic.

I would recommend you adopt the fwupd snap instead to do your update if you're affected by this problem:
https://snapcraft.io/fwupd

affects: fwupd (Ubuntu) → efivar (Ubuntu)
Changed in efivar (Ubuntu Disco):
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in efivar (Ubuntu Cosmic):
status: New → Won't Fix
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