Bug 462931

Does it work properly if you try to update from the terminal? You can try with "pkcon upgrade" or "apt get dist-upgrade"

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This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

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(In reply to Aleix Pol from comment #1)
> Does it work properly if you try to update from the terminal? You can try
> with "pkcon upgrade" or "apt get dist-upgrade"

Yes, that works without issues. Anyway, I don't think this is an issue with an actual upgrade. That works. This is an issue with displaying nonsense message (without any actual background issues) to a user.

I also have the exact same issue on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Updating from terminal using zypper works without any messages.

When searching to solve this I found the Stack Overflow answer below asking the user to change some configuration on Discover. Unfortunately, this configuration is not available to me.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1444178/kubuntu-update-yeilds-no-metadata-uris-for-vendor-directory

For reference easiness, I will paste the steps given in the answer here, I don't have the "Advanced button" on my Discover installation, nor any option similar to those on the answer neither in Discover nor on the Settings app.

> You can try the following steps if you want to use "Discover" to install updates.
> 
> - Open Discover and go to the Updates tab.
> - In the Updates tab, click on the Settings button in the top right corner of the window.
> - In the Settings window, go to the "Updates" section and click on the "Advanced" button.
> - In the Advanced settings window, go to the "Metadata" section and check the "Use vendor-provided metadata" option.
> - Click on the "Apply" button to save your changes and close the Settings window.

In one of the comments on the answer above, a user said they also don't have this configuration option but managed to fix it by reinstalling WINE, after comparing its apt source files to another installation where the message was absent. 

I don't have WINE installed, and I can't tell how I could verify the repos about this on OpenSUSE

Created attachment 156337 [details]
Screencast showcasing the unexpected error message

Screencast showcasing the unexpected "no metadata URIs for vendor-directory" error message

It's not a great error message, that's for sure. Unfortunately there's nothing Discover can do about it because this error message comes from the system itself; Discover it just passing it along and showing it to you. It means that something is misconfigured with respect to the PackageKit or AppStream setup on the machine. Ideally there would be a better error message that actually tells you what's going on, but, again, that's out of Discover's hands.

I would recommend following up with your distro about this when you see it.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #8)
> It's not a great error message, that's for sure. Unfortunately there's
> nothing Discover can do about it because this error message comes from the
> system itself; Discover it just passing it along and showing it to you. It
> means that something is misconfigured with respect to the PackageKit or
> AppStream setup on the machine. Ideally there would be a better error
> message that actually tells you what's going on, but, again, that's out of
> Discover's hands.
> 
> I would recommend following up with your distro about this when you see it.

I use Neon. Aren't this the actual bug repo for Neon as well?

Sure, we can move the bug report to Neon. But anyone else who had this issue on another distro needs to submit a bug for their distro.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #10)
> Sure, we can move the bug report to Neon. But anyone else who had this issue
> on another distro needs to submit a bug for their distro.

Hey Nathan, thanks for the reply!

Regarding the screen mentioned on SO here

> - In the Settings window, go to the "Updates" section and click on the "Advanced" button.
> - In the Advanced settings window, go to the "Metadata" section and check the "Use vendor-provided metadata" option.

Do you happen to know if these screens were added by a particular distro, or if they should be available on every Discover install?

Yes, that UI is distro-specific. Discover includes a button to open it if it's present; not all distros ship a config UI to tweak packaging stuff.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #12)
> Yes, that UI is distro-specific. Discover includes a button to open it if
> it's present; not all distros ship a config UI to tweak packaging stuff.

OK, thanks for the reply =)

Created attachment 156408 [details]
discover settings page highlighting vendor directory checkbox

I thought it was weird two different distros, from different Linux "lineage" (sorry, couldn't find a better word), to have the exact same error message.

After some more research, I found a bug report on Arch bug tracker where the user ran `plasma-dsicover-update` from their terminal. 

I ran in mine and had the following output

```bash
$ plasma-discover-update
fetch ratings! false
adding empty sources model QStandardItemModel(0x55d272279b60)
QCommandLineParser: option not defined: "feedback"
Fwupd Error 10 no metadata URIs for vendor-directory
no component found for "org.opensuse.opensuse-tumbleweed"
ready 0
steady 0
No updates available, exiting
```

Which hinted the problem to be with `fwupd`.

I ended up disabling the "vendor directory" checkbox on Discover's settings page, under the "Firmware Updates" section, and the message is gone. (see attached image)

Of course this is not an optimal solution, but could give someone else a hint. 

I know  `fwupd` is about hardware firmware updates from LVFS. The "vendor directory" checkbox is what is not yet clear to me, but I'll keep looking around.

I'd appreciate if someone knows better about how `fwupd` works, and what this "vendor directory" could be.

Looking into `/etc/fwupd/remotes.d` I have two files called `vendor.conf` and `vendor-directory.conf`.

In both files, I have a key-pair `Enabled=false` (they were already like this).

They also have these key-pair for their MetadataURI property:

- vendor.conf 
MetadataURI=file:///usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/vendor.xml.gz

- vendor-directory.conf
MetadataURI=file:///usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/firmware


The directory exists, but the `vendor.xml.gz` file referenced above is missing.

As I don't have any relevant files on the `/usr/share/fwupd/remotes.d/vendor/` directory, I'll call it a day, and leave the Discover's Settings Page vendor-directory checkbox unchecked.

My doubt is if Discover, or PackageKit, or fwupd (somehow), should be respecting the `Enabled=false`. Or if this still is something to be reported on the distro level.

I can confirm that unchecking the vendor directory in the Settings solved it for me as well. There is no error message anymore.  Thanks!

(In reply to Dan Duris from comment #16)
> I can confirm that unchecking the vendor directory in the Settings solved it
> for me as well. There is no error message anymore.  Thanks!

I am having the same issue on Manjaro, the same confusing error message popup, also starting also the end of last year.

Running plasma-discover-update in console I get the same message:  

fetch ratings! true
adding empty sources model QStandardItemModel(0x55f1c25088e0)
QCommandLineParser: option not defined: "feedback"
packagekitqt.transaction: Unknown Transaction property: "Sender" QVariant(QString, ":1.241")
Fwupd Error 10 no metadata URIs for vendor-directory
no component found for "org.manjaro.manjaro"

The the same resolution (unticking 'vendor directory' in settings) works for me

*** Bug 469086 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Git commit 565cea219d80d3117a0539df9a9ca2bbefb95c51 by Aleix Pol Gonzalez, on behalf of Adam Williamson.
Committed on 14/05/2023 at 21:26.
Pushed by apol into branch 'master'.

fwupd: don't refresh directory-type remotes on setup

File- and directory-type remotes cannot be refreshed, attempting
to do so will trigger an error "no metadata URIs for (remote)"
(because, internally, fwupd does not set the metadata_uri
property for file- or directory-type remotes). We already avoid
trying to refresh file-type remotes on setup, but we need to do
the same for directory-type remotes. This fixes the error
appearing with fwupd 1.9.1 (which ships with a directory-type
remote, vendor-directory, enabled by default).

Signed-off-by: Adam Williamson <awilliam@redhat.com>

M  +3    -1    libdiscover/backends/FwupdBackend/FwupdBackend.cpp

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/commit/565cea219d80d3117a0539df9a9ca2bbefb95c51

*** Bug 469812 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***