Bug#1019939: fwupd: Not well documented, what does it actually do on Debian systems?
Package: fwupd
Version: 1.8.4-2
Severity: minor
Dear Maintainer,
A few days ago we had press reports about updates from a specific os
vendor that made some linux machines unbootable. Although that the
vendor was probably well minded, this was problematic.
Today, at login I had a motd message from fwupd reminding me of a very
similar (or the same update) on my linux systems. Some user might have
installed it already accidentially via discover.
At this point I was looking for documentation about fwupd (mostly I knew
about it via phoronix.com telling me how great is is). But there is very
little to find in the internet (an outdated ubuntu page, or some arch
linux doc). Debian neither provides sufficient documentation.
Having in mind, that this february a satelite network provider
distrubuted a malicious firmware update that destroied thousands of
satelite modems, I choose the uninstall fwupdate on all machines.
Please:
The fwupdt package is very invasive and might be used maliciously. At
least it should be documented in an understandable way or should be
disabled by default.
It should not be used for automatic updates that can be triggered
by unexperienced users (like in discover) at all.
Yours Jürgen
-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (400, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 5.19.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Versions of packages fwupd depends on:
ii libc6 2.34-7
ii libcurl3-gnutls 7.85.0-1
ii libefiboot1 37-6
ii libelf1 0.187-2
pn libflashrom1 <none>
ii libfwupd2 1.8.4-2
pn libfwupdplugin1 <none>
pn libfwupdplugin7 <none>
ii libglib2.0-0 2.73.3-3
ii libgnutls30 3.7.7-2
ii libgudev-1.0-0 237-2
ii libgusb2 0.3.10-1
ii libjcat1 0.1.9-1
ii libjson-glib-1.0-0 1.6.6-1
ii libmbim-glib4 1.26.4-1
ii libmbim-proxy 1.26.4-1
ii libmm-glib0 1.18.10-2
ii libpolkit-gobject-1-0 0.105-33
ii libprotobuf-c1 1.4.1-1
ii libqmi-glib5 1.30.8-1
ii libqmi-proxy 1.30.8-1
pn libsmbios-c2 <none>
ii libsqlite3-0 3.39.3-1
ii libsystemd0 251.4-3
ii libtss2-esys-3.0.2-0 3.2.0-1+b1
pn libxmlb1 <none>
ii libxmlb2 0.3.8-1
ii shared-mime-info 2.2-1
Versions of packages fwupd recommends:
pn bolt <none>
ii dbus 1.14.0-2
pn fwupd-signed <none>
pn jq <none>
ii python3 3.10.6-1
pn secureboot-db <none>
ii udisks2 2.9.4-3
Versions of packages fwupd suggests:
pn gir1.2-fwupd-2.0 <none>
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