We’ve just added an optional feature to fwupd and the LVFS that some people might find useful: The firmware update process can now tell the user how long in seconds the update is going to take.
This means that users can know that a dock update might take 5 minutes, and so they start the update process before they go to lunch. A UEFI update will require multiple reboots and will take 45 minutes to apply, and so the user will only apply the update at the end of the day rather than losing access to the their computer for nearly an hour.
If you want to use this feature there are currently three ways to assign the duration to the update:
- Changing the value on the LVFS admin console — the component update panel now has an extra input field to enter the
duration in
seconds - Adding a new attribute to the element, for instance:
<release version="3.0.2" date="2018-11-09" install_duration="120">
- Adding a ‘quirk’ to fwupd, for instance:
[DeviceInstanceId=USB\VID_1234&PID_5678] InstallDuration = 40
For updates requiring a reboot the install duration should include the time to POST the system both before and after the update has run, but it can be approximate. Only users running very new versions of fwupd and gnome-software will be shown the install duration, and older versions will be unchanged as the new property will just be ignored. It’s therefore safe to include in all versions of firmware without adding a the dependency on a specific fwupd version.
