On 06/04/2020 20:15, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
Wrong. If you want to install it then set firmware to UEFI, attach ISO and boot. "Direct kernel boot" option is only if you do not have firmware which handle booting.
Thanks. I know that's how it should be done, but I haven't learned how to build a Debian installer cd image yet. I wanted my custom-built vmlinuz/initramfs to boot while a Debian-built ISO is attached. I think I could've mounted a disk with the two files and made GRUB boot them, but I don't know GRUB stuff either. "Direct kernel boot" appeared to be an easy way that just works.
Add Video (virtio), Spice screen, keyboard and tablet (virtio or USB ones). Then start VM. UEFI will start, initialize graphics, show Tianocore logo and load grub from install media. Then Debian starts and should load 'virtio_gpu' module to initialize graphics and start d-i on graphical console.
When I boot properly (with UEFI, virtio, spice as you said) from a Debian netboot mini.iso that's exactly what I see happens, except d-i only runs on the serial console (unless I use "console=tty0").
If it does not then d-i needs work. Serial console installation is something to be ashamed of (or 'expert' level option).
D-i tries to run itself on all consoles listed on /proc/consoles, but doesn't run on tty0 because in this case tty0 isn't in /proc/consoles even though graphics were initialized. "console=tty0" forces it to be there, so things work OK with it.
If you have time, please see the commit messages of a patchset [0] where I assumed tty0 not being in /proc/consoles is a kernel problem and tried to investigate. (I know the #elif/#else typo in the last patch though.)
[0] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/44156595-0eee-58da-4376-fd25b634d21b@gmail.com/T/
Fedora, CentOS, RHEL are at this level for a while. Debian should be too. For me lack of graphical installer on arm64 should be RC bug.
I've just downloaded "Fedora-Server-netinst-aarch64-31-1.9.iso" and it does run in the graphical console even when /proc/consoles doesn't list tty0 explicitly. Looks nice.