Fedora Looking To Better Alert Server Administrators Around Firmware Updates

Red Hat engineers are looking at making it more evident on Fedora IoT, CoreOS, and Server editions when firmware updates become available for the hardware in use.

For those running Fedora Workstation or similar Fedora desktop spins, GNOME Software or Plasma Discover will already graphically show you when there are firmware updates available for your system. But for being more proactive around informing users of firmware updates on CLI/headless systems, Red Hat is looking at improving it with message of the day reporting on Fedora 39.

Under the proposal laid out this week, the fwupd-refresh systemd timer would be enabled by default across Fedora IoT / CoreOS / Server editions. This timer refreshes the fwupd metadata from LVFS and can update the Message of the Day (MOTD) reporting to indicate firmware update availability. With this proposal, no firmware updating will occur automatically but it's just a matter of informing the user when firmware updates are available, since often times they are in the name of bug fixing or security handling.

More details on this change proposal for Fedora 39 can be found via the Fedora Wiki.