Fwupd does not start

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1

Hi, I just looked at fwupd but it doesn’t want to start. I found this page: fwupd and performed the first two instructions in the Setup section. (di is an alias for sudo dnf install)

di fwupd
Updating and loading repositories:
 RPM Fusion for Fedora 43 - Nonfree - NVIDIA Driver                   100% |   2.0 KiB/s |   8.6 KiB |  00m04s
 RPM Fusion for Fedora 43 - Free - Updates                            100% |   2.5 KiB/s |   7.9 KiB |  00m03s
 nordvpn - Created by dnf5 config-manager                             100% |   2.7 KiB/s |   1.5 KiB |  00m01s
 Fedora 43 - x86_64 - Updates                                         100% |   3.9 KiB/s |   8.0 KiB |  00m02s
Repositories loaded.
Package "fwupd-2.0.17-1.fc43.x86_64" is already installed.

Nothing to do.

 User jan @ Server fedora in Folder ~ : zo dec 07 - 08:27:06
$ sudo systemctl enable --now fwupd.service
The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, UpheldBy=,
Also=, or Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for
template units). This means they are not meant to be enabled or disabled using systemctl.
 
Possible reasons for having these kinds of units are:
• A unit may be statically enabled by being symlinked from another unit's
  .wants/, .requires/, or .upholds/ directory.
• A unit's purpose may be to act as a helper for some other unit which has
  a requirement dependency on it.
• A unit may be started when needed via activation (socket, path, timer,
  D-Bus, udev, scripted systemctl call, ...).
• In case of template units, the unit is meant to be enabled with some
  instance name specified.

What am I missing? In former versions of Fedora, I did not use it before in version F43, it did work but now something is wrong.
Thanks.

[EDIT] When I want to start fwupdmgr I get program not found.

2

Fwupd is the name of the package that installs the tools.
The command to use it from the cli is fwupdmgr

It is not intended that a user modify the target that is called by a timer for detecting firmware updates to be installed. Instead use the manager fwupdmgr to verify/check for updates/install updates as needed.

The command fwupdmgr requires an argument following it to tell it what is intended.
See man fwupdmgr or fwupdmgr -h for details.

4

Thanks Jeff, yes I know that the name of the program is fwupdmgr but since I did not type a following argument or option I got the result: Command not found.

As far as I know I did not change anything, I only tried to start the program.

Steven, I get this:

systemctl status fwupd.service
● fwupd.service - Firmware update daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fwupd.service; static)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2025-12-07 16:55:01 WIB; 9min ago
 Invocation: 94bb897a44324ab3ac270ea87c90eeb9
       Docs: https://fwupd.org/
   Main PID: 12546 (fwupd)
      Tasks: 4 (limit: 17858)
     Memory: 9.7M (peak: 11.3M)
        CPU: 406ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/fwupd.service
             └─12546 /usr/libexec/fwupd/fwupd

dec 07 16:55:00 192.168.1.9 systemd[1]: Starting fwupd.service - Firmware update daemon...
dec 07 16:55:01 192.168.1.9 fwupd[12546]: 09:55:01.066 FuMain               fwupd 2.0.17 ready for requests (>
dec 07 16:55:01 192.168.1.9 systemd[1]: Started fwupd.service - Firmware update daemon.

It is running now, when I did this before I tried fwupdmgr get-history it was dead.

I did that and got so many messages that the list exceeded the amount of lines in the terminal. It does show me a permission denied error. So I did rerun the command but now with sudo and the permission error is gone, but the amount of lines is more than 5000 so I will not copy them here.

I have seen there are updates waiting, also for several fwupd packages but I can’t run updates here now because I am in south-east Asia on an extremely slow internet line which is also on the clock, so downloading large amounts of data is a no go. I will first have to drink coffee with free wi-fi before I can do that. Will try this again after running the updates.
Thanks for all your information @computersavvy and @steppybug .

5

That service is not intended to be enabled which is what the error is saying.
Seems it is started by a systemd timer or on demand.

1 Like
6

What happens when you do fwupdmgr update ?

On my system, that searches for updates - no need for me to start a service.

(Although none of my devices ever seem to have updates in LVFS, so my ability to troubleshoot anything else is limited!)

That “Command not found” error message can be misleading. It resembles the error you get when you type a non-existent command, e.g.

$ abc
bash: abc: command not found

But in fact, what fwupdmgr is trying to tell you is “you can’t just type fwupdmgr, it needs to be fwupdmgr *something*”.

1 Like
7

The systemctl enable -- now fwupd.service comes from a Fedora wiki page: Wiki fwupd.

On the same web page I see the commands I have to use and they work. I got 6 updateble devices, but won’t do the update now because of the slow internet line.

Thanks guys, again you’ve been very helpfull.