My PC has an older motherboard that does not allow Fedora to interact with the BIOS. When attempting to perform this update from Fedora
Secure Boot Signature
Database Configuration Update
2011-2023
I get the following error:
“Unable to download updates”
failed to write-firmware: failed to write DBUpdate3P2023.bin:
failed to write data to efivarsfs:
Error writing to file descriptor:
Invalid argument
Is there a way to access this DB and update manually from inside the BIOS ?
Look up your motherboards support website.
You can often
Install over network or
Install via USB
Unless there is a motherboard issue / problem
You might not need to update the BIOS at all.
The question is install what. Can this DB be accessed and copied into a USB, independently of the update?
What command/tool are you running that reports this error?
Tried both installing as a GNOME update, and manually from bash - it fails regardless. For example:
sudo fwupdmgr update
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Upgrade UEFI CA from 2011 to 2023? ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ This updates the 3rd Party UEFI Signature Database (the "db") to the latest ║
║ release from Microsoft. It also adds the latest OptionROM UEFI Signature ║
║ Database update. ║
║ ║
║ UEFI CA and all connected devices may not be usable while updating. ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Perform operation? [Y|n]: Y
Writing… [****************************** ]
failed to write-firmware: failed to write DBUpdate3P2023.bin: failed to write data to efivarsfs: Error writing to file descriptor: Invalid argument
It looks like my aging motherboard (Asus Rampage V extreme) doesn’t let any interactions that write onto the BIOS from the OS. Not sure if there is any way around this - there are no new updates, the motherboard is not supported any longer
fwupdmgr requires the vendor to have APIs in the BIOS to allow the updates to be automatically applied. And the vendor must make the firmware available in to the fwupd project.
I see this BIOS for your board https://www.asus.com/supportonly/rampage%20v%20extreme/helpdesk_bios/ described as:
RAMPAGE-V-EXTREME Beta BIOS 4101
Version 4101
8.3 MB
2019/07/17
Updated uCode for Intel security issue.
I expect you need to do the update manually.
But first check to see what version of BIOS you have installed.
It may not be worth updating, as you say this is an old working system.
Right - am using the latest update
Unless there is a manual way, updating from Fedora will not work. The only possibility is if I can get the DB in a usb and install manually from inside the BIOS. But I haven’t found a way to get the DBX in this way. So best to forget about it I suppose.
That “UEFI CA from 2011 to 2023” is just an UEFI Secure Boot signature database (dbx) update from Microsoft.
Are you using Secure Boot? If not, you can safely ignore this error. It won’t affect stability or security if Secure Boot is off.
If you are using Secure Boot and your system boots fine, you don’t need this update either.
Had a lot of trouble getting the NVIDIA drivers installed and functioning with Secure Boot on so I turned it off (essentially for the same reason: my BIOS won’t let the NVIDIA driver add a key)
It’s mostly just a nuisance getting warned about the update via the GNOME updater
I don’t use gnome, is there a setting to stop checking for firmware updates in the updater?