Bug#1036952: rootskel: text installs on aarch64 lack glyphs for many languages
On 01/06/2023 16:27, Emanuele Rocca wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> On 2023-05-31 05:46, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>> The problem is that both are frown-prone. I guess there is a reason why
>> on arm the default console is set to the serial port, e.g. for simpler
>> debugging or something like that.
>
> Also worth mentioning: there is no bug on real hardware (eg: RPi 3B+).
>
> So far I think we've only heard about people getting this issue with
> qemu.
I've had this problem on my chromebook (rk3399-gru-kevin) since forever.
I don't know what's best here, but wanted to provide more context in
case it helps. Thank you all for working on it.
There's actually two different things that can make Linux set a serial
port as the preferred console on arm64 systems:
- An SPCR table on devices using ACPI
- A /chosen stdout-path property on devices using device-tree
I had once tried to change it on the kernel side, going through that
email thread [1] might make the how-and-why clearer. (I've silently
given up on that series)
Furthermore, the same thing happens in the installed system as well,
which will ask for your encryption password over a serial console that
you have no access to [2] unless you have ended up installing plymouth
transitively through a desktop environment.
Adding console=tty0 would persist into the installed system and fix
that, so I'm used to doing that as a workaround on my own systems. But
that disables the serial console on device-tree systems, so doing it by
default is a problem for SBCs etc. where people might genuinely be
trying to install over serial. (I'd still like it for "Graphical
Install" entries [3], but that's orthogonal to this).
[1] Prefer working VT console over SPCR and device-tree stdout-path
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200513143755.GM17734@linux-b0ei/
[2] initramfs-tools: prefers serial console over framebuffer console
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=952452
[3] arm64 graphical installer fixes merge request
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/merge_requests/17
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