I didn’t realize my fwupd installation was not working till I noticed my BIOS is still running 1.5.1 instead of the latest 1.6.3. Upon investigation, I realized I did not have the Linux Firmware Update boot entry above the Linux Boot Manager entry. When I fixed that, or tried to manually select after F12, it still was not working. It took some time to notice there was an extremely tiny message flashing for less than .1 seconds. I had to use my DSLR to zoom in and record a video of the corner of the screen to figure out what it says:

Found update fwupd-7ceaf7a8-0611-4480-9e30-64d8de420c7c-0 WARNING: No updates to process. Called in error?

I realized I could boot to the laptop’s native BIOS update utility with F12 and then navigate to the .pac file in \EFI\arch\fw\, so I did not need to solve this problem.

Other potentially useful diagnostics:

$ tree /boot/efi /boot/efi ├── arch │   ├── fw │   │   ├── fwupd-3b8c8162-188c-46a4-aec9-be43f1d65697.cap │   │   └── fwupd-7ceaf7a8-0611-4480-9e30-64d8de420c7c.cap │   └── fwupdx64.efi ├── BOOT │   └── BOOTX64.EFI ├── Dell │   └── logs │   ├── diags_current.xml │   └── diags_previous.xml └── systemd └── systemd-bootx64.efi

6 directories, 7 files

$ efibootmgr -v BootCurrent: 0002 Timeout: 2 seconds BootOrder: 0000,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006 Boot0000 Linux Firmware Updater HD(1,GPT,f71bc7d9-9b12-4e77-a44e-5c6513ae6dae,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\arch\fwupdx64.efi) Boot0002 Linux Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,f71bc7d9-9b12-4e77-a44e-5c6513ae6dae,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi) Boot0003 Diskette Drive BBS(Floppy,Diskette Drive,0x0)..BO Boot0004 M.2 PCIe SSD BBS(HD,P0: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB,0x0)..BO Boot0005 USB Storage Device BBS(USB,USB Storage Device,0x0)..BO Boot0006 CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive BBS(CDROM,CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive,0x0)..BO

$ efivar -l | grep fw 0abba7dc-e516-4167-bbf5-4d9d1c739416-fwupd-7ceaf7a8-0611-4480-9e30-64d8de420c7c-0

$ journalctl -u fwupd — Logs begin at Fri 2018-11-30 22:29:07 PST, end at Fri 2019-02-15 15:41:10 PST. — Feb 02 14:15:19 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 02 14:15:19 Charlie18c fwupd[9876]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 02 14:15:20 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 02 14:20:59 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 02 14:20:59 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 02 14:20:59 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 12 19:59:54 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 12 19:59:54 Charlie18c fwupd[3027]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 12 19:59:55 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 12 20:08:29 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 12 20:08:29 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 12 20:08:29 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 16:50:45 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 16:50:46 Charlie18c fwupd[10754]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 16:50:46 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 16:53:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 16:53:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 16:53:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 16:56:29 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 16:56:29 Charlie18c fwupd[3864]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 16:56:30 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 17:01:47 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:01:47 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 17:01:47 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 17:02:49 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:02:49 Charlie18c fwupd[3186]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 17:02:50 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 17:03:14 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:03:14 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 17:03:14 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 17:13:07 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:13:07 Charlie18c fwupd[3462]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 17:13:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 17:13:21 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:13:21 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 17:13:21 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 17:48:53 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:48:53 Charlie18c fwupd[10887]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 17:48:54 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 17:48:57 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 17:48:58 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 17:48:58 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 14 18:03:26 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 18:03:26 Charlie18c fwupd[7129]: Failed to get PCR0s: missing executable tpm2_pcrlist in PATH Feb 14 18:03:27 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 14 18:04:09 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 14 18:04:09 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 14 18:04:09 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon. — Reboot — Feb 15 15:11:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Starting Firmware update daemon… Feb 15 15:11:08 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Started Firmware update daemon. Feb 15 15:11:57 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopping Firmware update daemon… Feb 15 15:11:58 Charlie18c systemd[1]: fwupd.service: Succeeded. Feb 15 15:11:58 Charlie18c systemd[1]: Stopped Firmware update daemon.

Note I got rid of the tpm2_pcrlist error by installing tpm2-tools package, though I doubted this was central to the problem.