Error while upgrading to linux-firmware/focal-updates,focal-updates 1.187.36

I am facing this problem while updating firmware from 1.187.35 to 1.187.36. While upgrading this error message shows:

Preparing to unpack .../linux-firmware_1.187.36_all.deb ...
Unpacking linux-firmware (1.187.36) over (1.187.35) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.187.36_all.deb (--unpack):
 unable to open '/lib/firmware/ath11k/IPQ6018/hw1.0/m3_fw.mdt.dpkg-new': No such file or directory
No apport report written because the error message indicates an issue on the local system
                                                                                         
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-60-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-58-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-52-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-46-generic
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.187.36_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I tried solved using the following commands:

sudo apt --fix-broken install

But same error.

Tried cleaning the cache and update, but still facing the same error

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f 
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

I had a very similar case:

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.187.37_all.deb (--unpack):
 unable to install new version of '/lib/firmware/ath11k/WCN6855/hw2.1/amss.bin': No such file or directory

Here's how I solved it:

Switch to the ath11k subdirectory of linux-firmware directory on the troubled machine:

cd /lib/linux-firmware/ath11k;
ls -la;

That thing has various product types:

total 0
drwxrwxr-x  9 hasan hasan  180 Mar 19 21:39 ./
drwxrwxr-x 98 hasan hasan 8100 Mar 19 21:39 ../
drwxrwxr-x  3 hasan hasan   60 Mar 19 21:39 IPQ6018/
drwxrwxr-x  3 hasan hasan   60 Mar 19 21:39 IPQ8074/
drwxrwxr-x  3 hasan hasan   60 Mar 19 21:39 QCA6390/
drwxrwxr-x  3 hasan hasan   60 Mar 19 21:39 WCN6855/

The OP mentions IPQ6018. In my case it was WCN6855.

cd WCN6855;
ls -la;

That has a subdirectory version hw2.0 and a symlink to back to it called hw2.1:

total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 24  2022 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 26 16:11 ../
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Mar 19 21:51 hw2.0/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    5 Feb 18  2022 hw2.1 -> hw2.0/

That is the defect!!

In my case the error was '... /hw2.1/amss.bin': No such file or directory.

Looking within hw2.0 ...

cd hw2.0;
ls -la;

... we see:

total 6212
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    4096 Mar 19 21:51 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    4096 Feb 24  2022 ../
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    4096 May 29  2022 1.1/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      71 Mar 19 21:32 amss.bin -> 1.1/WLAN.HSP.1.1-03125-QCAHSPSWPL_V1_V2_SILICONZ_LITE-3.6510.9/amss.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6158196 Mar 19 21:51 board-2.bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      69 Mar 19 21:32 m3.bin -> 1.1/WLAN.HSP.1.1-03125-QCAHSPSWPL_V1_V2_SILICONZ_LITE-3.6510.9/m3.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  152394 Mar 19 21:51 Notice.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   24310 Mar 19 21:51 regdb.bin

So, amss.bin is present, but there's a triple symlink chain involved.

I simply deleted the top level symlink and then copied 'hw2.0' to create a new directory 'hw2.1' ...

sudo rm hw2.1;
sudo cp -r hw2.0 hw2.1;
ls -la;

... leaving:

total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Mar 19 21:57 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 26 16:11 ../
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Mar 19 21:52 hw2.0/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Mar 19 21:57 hw2.1/

I reran the sudo apt upgrade and the problem went away.