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eizengan

Member

Registered: 2025-02-13

Posts: 13

Diagnosing transient errors from fwupd-refresh.service

For the past couple weeks I have been experiencing transient failures of fwupd-refresh.service. When I restart the unit I see the following output:

Job for fwupd-refresh.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status fwupd-refresh.service" and "journalctl -xeu fwupd-refresh.service" for details.

From the aforementioned journal command:

...
... systemd[1]: fwupd-refresh.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status>
░░ Subject: Unit process exited
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
░░ 
░░ An ExecStart= process belonging to unit fwupd-refresh.service has exited.
░░ 
░░ The process' exit code is 'exited' and its exit status is 1.
...

There is only one such process in the unit's file, specifying the command /usr/bin/fwupdmgr refresh. When I run this command myself, however, it always succeeds and exits 0. Restarting the unit after running the command manually causes it to no-op (up to date) and succeed.

Ideas to triage these intermittent failures would be quite welcome; I'm at a loss! Why does the service fail when manual invocation invariably succeeds?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,224

Re: Diagnosing transient errors from fwupd-refresh.service

Never use "-x" w/ journalctl, every line starting w/ "░░" is just useless noise.
When you encounter this, what is the output of "systemctl status fwupd-refresh.service" and in doubt look at the actual system journal in context (sudo journalctl -b)
If there's anything interesting it's gonna be before the bit you posted (and maybe something afterwards explains it)

Spoiler (perhaps): https://man.archlinux.org/man/fwupdmgr.1#Remotes
What's the state of your network when this fails?

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eizengan

Member

Registered: 2025-02-13

Posts: 13

Re: Diagnosing transient errors from fwupd-refresh.service

When you encounter this, what is the output of "systemctl status fwupd-refresh.service" and in doubt look at the actual system journal in context (sudo journalctl -b)

I did record the output of that command as well, though to my eye it didn't contain anything that useful:

× fwupd-refresh.service - Refresh fwupd metadata and update motd
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fwupd-refresh.service; static)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2026-06-19 17:18:10 EDT; 28s ago
 Invocation: eeb92675b3464f848de0857c46ac2e13
TriggeredBy: ● fwupd-refresh.timer
       Docs: man:fwupdmgr(1)
    Process: 23573 ExecStart=/usr/bin/fwupdmgr refresh (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 23573 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Mem peak: 11.5M
        CPU: 35ms

Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: Starting Refresh fwupd metadata and update motd...
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur fwupdmgr[23573]: Updating lvfs
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: fwupd-refresh.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: fwupd-refresh.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: Failed to start Refresh fwupd metadata and update motd.

More or less the same output from the system journal:

Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur sudo[23547]:     nate : TTY=pts/1 ; PWD=/home/nate/.config ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/systemctl restart fwupd-refresh
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur sudo[23547]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by nate(uid=1000)
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: Starting Refresh fwupd metadata and update motd...
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur fwupdmgr[23573]: Updating lvfs
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: fwupd-refresh.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: fwupd-refresh.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur systemd[1]: Failed to start Refresh fwupd metadata and update motd.
Jun 19 17:18:10 ishkur sudo[23547]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root

When the issue happens again I'll take a look at the network. I suspect it will be connected/unrelated, however, given the apparent determinism in "restart service == failure" and "manual `fwupdmgr refresh` == success"

EDIT:
Narrow terminal made me miss the end of some lines in the system journal, now fixed

Last edited by eizengan (2026-06-20 19:50:55)