Arch Linux

tda

Member

Registered: 2020-06-27

Posts: 44

[SOLVED] how to install System76 firmware from the command line

I just got a System76 Lemur Pro laptop. I have installed Arch on it, and the installation seemed to be ok except for the fact that many log messages are printed to the console (see this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=257740). Anyway, I am trying to update the System76 firmware using the CLI, but am having trouble. There doesn't seem to be very much documentation about it, except for a page on the System76 website, some information about other System76 laptops on the Arch Wiki, and a few blog posts here and there. Based on these references, these are the AUR packages that I'm aware of that seem to be relevant to System76 firmware:

system76-firmware-daemon
system76-driver
firmware-manager
system76-dkms
system76-io-dkms
system76-acpi-dkms
system76-oled
system76-power

For good measure, I have installed all of these (using pikaur). These packages provide some systemd services that I am aware of and I have enabled: system76, system76-firmware-daemon, and system76-power. But none of these packages seemed to install the function system76-firmware-cli, which is what I believe is supposed to install firmware updates using the CLI. All I see are the following system76* functions:

system76-driver
system76-driver-cli
system76-driver-pkexec
system76-oled
system76-power

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

references:
https://support.system76.com/articles/system-firmware/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System76_Oryx_Pro
https://blog.burntsushi.net/system76-darter-archlinux/
https://tonymugen.github.io/ArchLinuxSys76OP.html

Last edited by tda (2020-08-06 02:54:19)

ondoho

Member

Registered: 2013-04-30

Posts: 692

Website

Re: [SOLVED] how to install System76 firmware from the command line

But none of these packages seemed to install the function system76-firmware-cli, which is what I believe is supposed to install firmware updates using the CLI.

Neither the AUR not archlinux repos seem to have a package like that.
The function to "install firmware updates using the CLI" seems meaningless since the default way to update/install things in ArchLinux is the CLI anyhow.

Are you sure you need this? Why, what does it do?
If yes, you need to install it manually from system76's site, I guess. Is there a PKGBUILD?

tda

Member

Registered: 2020-06-27

Posts: 44

Re: [SOLVED] how to install System76 firmware from the command line

Thanks for the response. All of the references I've read mention using the system76-firmware-cli command to install the firmware updates, which is the reason I think it is supposed to be installed. But I can't seem to find any real documentation about any of the commands.

I mentioned the CLI way to upgrade specifically because there is also a GUI-based firmware manager (which I think is part of the firmware-manager AUR package) that I believe is integrated with Gnome and found in Gnome Settings. I wasn't able to get this to work though.

The AUR packages that I mentioned are based on code that System76 provides through Github. These packages are included in System76's operating system POP!_OS, but my understanding is that it is also recommended to install them if you're using another distribution like Arch. One reason I'd like to install them is that I've had an issue with the console being flooded with kernel messages (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=257740) and someone else had a similar issue that seemed to be fixed by firmware updates (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=257815).

tda

Member

Registered: 2020-06-27

Posts: 44

Re: [SOLVED] how to install System76 firmware from the command line

Ok I think I figured it out. I believe the only AUR packages I needed to install were either system76-firmware-daemon or system76-firmware-daemon-git. While the system76-firmware-daemon-git package created the executable /usr/bin/system76-firmware-cli which was on my PATH, the system76-firmware-daemon package seemed to leave that file within the AUR folder I had git cloned:

system76-firmware-daemon/src/system76-firmware-1.0.13/target/release/system76-firmware-cli

This executable still seemed to work, but I was confused because I thought it would be installed to somewhere on my PATH like /usr/bin.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't necessary to start or enable any of the systemd services.

Finally, I didn't have my EFI partition mounted (which never seemed to cause any other problems) which gave me the error "system76-firmware: EFI mount point not found" when running the system76-firmware-cli command. I fixed this problem by mounting my boot partition: mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,327

Re: [SOLVED] how to install System76 firmware from the command line

While the system76-firmware-daemon-git package created the executable /usr/bin/system76-firmware-cli which was on my PATH, the system76-firmware-daemon package seemed to leave that file within the AUR folder I had git cloned:

system76-firmware-daemon/src/system76-firmware-1.0.13/target/release/system76-firmware-cli

This executable still seemed to work, but I was confused because I thought it would be installed to somewhere on my PATH like /usr/bin.

You can list the contents of the package

pacman -Qlp system76-firmware-daemon-1.0.13-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/dbus-1/
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/dbus-1/system.d/system76-firmware-daemon.conf
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/systemd/
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/systemd/system/
system76-firmware-daemon /etc/systemd/system/system76-firmware-daemon.service
system76-firmware-daemon /usr/
system76-firmware-daemon /usr/lib/
system76-firmware-daemon /usr/lib/system76-firmware/
system76-firmware-daemon /usr/lib/system76-firmware/system76-firmware-daemon