BIOS update doesn't prompt for reboot [snap-store snap] fwupd

[Béné]

The snap store shows that there is a BIOS update available for my Dell XPS 9360.

What happens:

On clicking "install", the button greys out and a small charging bar appears on it. Once charging is complete, the store page goes blank briefly and then the original update appears like it was never applied.

What should happen:

After clicking on install the Snap Store should signal me that the update went fine and that I need to reboot my computer to apply the update.

The gnome-software DEB behaves as intended, prompts me to reboot and the update installs successfully.

This is a fully updated fresh install of the Focal Beta, the snap-store snap is from the stable channel.

Please let me know if I can supply any further info!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, could you add your 'journalctl -b 0' after getting the issue?

[Yuan-Chen Cheng (ycheng-twn)]

fwupd deb 1.3.11-1~focal1
snap-store, Version: 3.38.0-59-g494f078, Rev: 518 (latest/stable)

I can partially reproduce this issue.

I setup a test lvfs server, create a gpg key, create a xml file that bump the bios version, and put the cab file downloaded from lvfs, use the key to sign the xml file, then I can simulate the firmware upgrade repeatedly.

Given above, I use snap-store to upgrade system bios, it works well, but it does not prompt for reboot. Then I manually reboot, the efi app is properly running to upgrade(re-install per my test case) the system bios. After upgrading is done, then it reboots into ubuntu without any problem.

So the real bug is, I can't see the reboot prompt.

As I use the gnome-software deb 3.36.1-0ubuntu0.20.04.0 to run the same test (well, I didn't remove snap-store snap), then I can see the reboot prompt.

The attached log is capture using snap-store to upgrade the BIOS, as I can't see the reboot prompt.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the journal log, it includes

dbus-daemon[1231]: apparmor="DENIED" operation="dbus_method_call" bus="session" path="/org/gtk/Notifications" interface="org.gtk.Notifications" member="AddNotification" mask="send" name="org.gtk.Notifications" pid=1788 label="snap.snap-store.ubuntu-software" peer_pid=1525 peer_label="unconfined"

which could be the issue there

[Béné (bene-d)]

I got another BIOS update and could retest. The issue persists. I attached a short video of the issue and the output of 'journalctl -b 0'.

[Béné (bene-d)]

And here the short video of the issue. Hope it helps!

[Yuan-Chen Cheng (ycheng-twn)]

Test on an updated jammy and still can reproduce this issue.

[Yuan-Chen Cheng (ycheng-twn)]

per my test, it does not prompt reboot, but the update still works.

As we do a reboot after that, it will run the bios upgrade EFI app, and upgrade the bios.

So I'll remove the "silently fails" part from the subject.

[Béné (bene-d)]

Yuan-Chen, yes, I can confirm that the update still runs. There is no user feedback about it though. So if the user doesn't know how the firmware update works (runs the upgrade app on reboot) they will believe the update is broken and not applied. That's what I thought before I dug into it.