SOLVED Grub and graphics mode

[Borja Marcos]

Hi

Just a silly suggestion.

Would it be possible to configure GRUB so that it doesn't go into graphics mode? As far as I know it doesn't offer any benefit, and it's a problem when accessing the system console through at least one "LOM" system (in my case, Hewlett Packard's iLO) which has a nice feature, console accesss through a terminal via ssh instead of relying on proprietary implementations of VNC running on Java.

There are also some BIOS implementations that offer a serial redirection of text output. Graphics mode completely defeats them as well.

 

[dlavigne]

Please create a feature request at bugs.freenas.org and post the issue number here.

 

[Borja Marcos]

Aye aye! ;)

Feature #6921.

Thanks!

 

[jkh]

Should be fixed in tonight's update - please verify.

 

[Borja Marcos]

I've updated right now and it still goes into graphics mode. At least the "textcons" option is complaining about it. Probably it doesn't like anything different than the old 80x25 text mode.

After the "welcome to GRUB" message the screen just goes black. Checking with the Java console I see that GRUB is still changing the video mode.

At least this HP system, and I guess others, is based on a very kludgy "solution", sampling the output of a graphics card in order to obtain text output that can be sent to a serial port or ssh client, go figure!

This is a screenshot during BIOS stuff, (notice the 720x400 below, which seems to be the old text based mode from the era where peecees didn't have graphics, just text cards).

Now GRUB loads,

And it switches video mode. Note the "640x480" VGA resolution and the different font. I don't know, maybe other remote console systems are more clever and this is just an HP issue. Anyway, I still think that it's better to stick to the dumbest video mode.

After GRUB, the sytem goes back to the proper (at least in my opinion) mode

 

[jkh]

What happens if you reboot again, into a new boot environment? Xin says that grub changes will only take effect one reboot after the one that created them.

 

[Borja Marcos]

It still changed into VGA mode.

I found a solution, changing gfxmode from "auto" to "text". After the update and reboot it was set to "auto" and I guess the behavior can be different depending on the machine.

Anyway I never saw a point in putting a loader in a graphics mode. Fonts are less ugly, granted, but there are no more advantages. (And, besides, I consider it really stupid to add pretty graphics that hide sometimes important error or informative messages, as some Linux distributions tend to do).

I guess the only safe solution is to use "text" for gfxmode.

I'll try to reboot again, I am playing with this server so I can destroy/recreate or whatever is needed.

I don't know about other BIOS implementations doing redirections or iLO/DRAC thingies. Maybe others are more clever and can extract valida characters, but I guess not. If I remember correctly (last time I had to think about this stuff was in 1988 or so!) the API is different between the old text mode in which the card just had a character generator and no drawing support (people used those cute line extended characters to draw boxes) and a graphics mode.

I've just rebooted changing it back to "auto" and it went to graphics mode. The sequence is as shown above, with three screens in text mode (2 HP POST/BIOS screens plus the initial "welcome to GRUB"), graphics mode for the GRUB menu and back to text with the FreeBSD kernel loader and kernel.

It's funny that poor design decisions made in 1982 are still making people waste so much time!

 

[jkh]

Actually, we just found another bug. Give me another hour or two to roll another update before trying again. :)

 

[Borja Marcos]

I've just updated with the latest BETA build, fixed now! :)

I see you just removed the font loading stuff and all that. Great :)

FreeNAS-9.3-BETA-201412050249