"fails to request state" when trying to perform actions in mokutil

[Mario Limonciello]

Recently it's been observed that mokutil is unable to make changes to the various Mok* variables. It complains that "fails to request state" when trying most actions or similar errors.

The root of these problems is because the variables have been set as immutable after this kernel commit:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ed8b0de5a33d2a2557dce7f9429dca8cb5bc5879

In many instances mokutil 0.2 will delete the variable and recreate it, so changing it with chattr isn't a workable solution as the kernel will just recreate it with the immutable attribute and it will fail over again.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

Alternatively it seems that this might be fixed by moving to mokutil 0.3. Mokutil 0.3 has switched over to use libefivar (https://github.com/lcp/mokutil/commit/7b49e834284659527c9f7cf554f223748c00564b). libefivar has handling for immutable variables since version 0.22 (https://github.com/rhinstaller/efivar/commit/df78c364a1d362655f5495e781b647553b5ae144).

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1560764

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

I have a linux task included because this can also be approached from a kernel perspective (https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/3/22/733).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mokutil - 0.3.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
mokutil (0.3.0-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * New upstream version.
    - Now uses efivar which supports immutable attributes (LP: #1560764)
  * B-D on libefivar-dev, dh-autoreconf
  * debian/rules: use autoreconf
  * Backport cdb4b6f3 from upstream to fix i386 builds.

 -- Mario Limonciello <email address hidden> Tue, 22 Mar 2016 21:25:22 -0500