fwupd/data/remotes.d

Vendor Firmware

These are the steps to add vendor firmware that is installed as part of an embedded image such as an OSTree or ChromeOS image:

• Change /etc/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor.conf to have Enabled=true
• Change /etc/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor.conf to have the correct Title
• Deploy the firmware to /usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/firmware
• Deploy the metadata to /usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/vendor.xml.gz

The metadata should be of the form:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<components version="0.9">
  <component type="firmware">
    <id>FIXME.firmware</id>
    <name>FIXME</name>
    <summary>FIXME</summary>
    <developer_name>FIXME</developer_name>
    <project_license>FIXME</project_license>
    <description><p>FIXME</p></description>
    <url type="homepage">http://FIXME</url>
    <releases>
      <release version="FIXME" date="2017-07-27" urgency="high">
        <size type="installed">86406</size>
        <location>firmware/FIXME.cab</location>
        <checksum filename="FIXME.hex" target="content" type="sha1">96a92915c9ebaf3dd232cfc7dcc41c1c6f942877</checksum>
        <description><p>FIXME.</p></description>
      </release>
    </releases>
    <provides>
      <firmware type="flashed">FIXME</firmware>
    </provides>
  </component>
</components>

Ideally, the metadata and firmware should be signed by either GPG or a PKCS7 certificate. If this is the case also change Keyring=gpg or Keyring=pkcs7 in /etc/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor.conf and ensure the correct public key or signing certificate is installed in the /etc/pki/fwupd location.

Automatic metadata generation

fwupd and fwupdtool support automatically generating metadata for a remote by configuring it to be a directory type. This is very convenient if you want to dynamically add firmware from multiple packages while generating the image but there are a few deficiencies:

• There will be a performance impact of starting the daemon or tool measured by O(# CAB files)
• It's not possible to verify metadata signature and any file validation should be part of the image validation.

To enable this:

• Change /etc/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor-directory.conf to have Enabled=true
• Change /etc/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor.conf-directory to have the correct Title
• Deploy the firmware to /usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/firmware
• Change MetadataURI to that of the directory (Eg /usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/)

Mirroring a Repository

The LVFS currently outputs XML with absolute URI locations, e.g. <location>http://foo/bar.cab</location> rather than <location>bar.cab</location>

This makes mirroring the master LVFS (or other private instance) somewhat tricky. To work around this issue client remotes can specify FirmwareBaseURI to replace the URI of the firmware before it is downloaded.

For mirroring the LVFS content to a new CDN, you could use:

[fwupd Remote]
Enabled=true
Type=download
Keyring=gpg
MetadataURI=https://my.new.cdn/mirror/firmware.xml.gz
FirmwareBaseURI=https://my.new.cdn/mirror

New instances of the LVFS can actually output a relative URL for firmware files, e.g. <location>bar.cab</location> and when downloading the MetadataURI name and path prefix is used in this case. This is not enabled for the "upstream" LVFS instance as versions of fwupd older than 1.0.3 are unable to automatically use the MetadataURI value for firmware downloads.