Bug#1065570: Interface border is replaced by ascii chars
Sorry, I don't mean to make you chase information. The only other difference is our pxelinux.cfg. We are using a minimal pxelinux in order to bypass the interactive menus with the following content.
default linux
label linux
kernel debian-installer/amd64/linux
append initrd=debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz ip=dhcp auto=enable language=en country=US locale=en_US.UTF-8 keymap=ansi hostname=debian domain="" url=tftp://10.0.0.1/preseed.cfg
I attempted a minimal repro using a command similar to yours but using "qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm" (because I can't seem to find the package that has the kvm bin) and did not get the bug. I know it's not isolated to VirtualBox because I have video of the bug happening on a bare metal install (https://youtu.be/-OiJVJp8SxQ bug occurs at about 1:05).
After some digging, I saw that the original netboot.tar.gz had pxelinux.cfg symlinked to debian-installer/amd64/pxelinux.cfg which has a default file symlinked to ../boot-screens/syslinux.cfg (realpath debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens/syslinux.cfg). The QEMU reproduction I tried I edited that file directly, whereas the other tests I've done a script has replaced it pxelinux.cfg/default with a new file (removing the symlink entirely). I modified our script-generated tftp directory (for VirtualBox) to fix the symlink (putting the above contents into the debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens/syslinux.cfg file directly) and that didn't fix the issue (I thought I was onto something).
I reset the TFTP dir to just the preseed.cfg (so not our pxelinux.cfg) and input the kernel parameters in the default menu. One thing I noticed was the default parameters include VGA=788 (which our menu above was missing). This appears to have fixed the issue. I ran the QEMU test mentioned earlier using the pxelinux.cfg above, but qualitatively it looked like it was running in a different graphical mode. With this information, I think this may be related to the absence of the "VGA=" parameter in our boot parameters. I see there's an existing bug https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=969944 regarding the same parameter, but I don't see enough information there to say it's the same issue.
That's all the relevant information I can think of for now. Maybe see if your KVM is able to reproduce using the pxelinux.cfg above or removing the "VGA=788" parameter from the kernel command line?
On Wednesday, March 6th, 2024 at 6:57 PM, Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> x11r, le mer. 06 mars 2024 23:29:24 +0000, a ecrit:
>
> > The mangling does not happen immediately. It happens after the "Installing the base system" step (not sure what the step after that is supposed to be). Here's a pastebin of the preseed.cfg: https://pastebin.com/K7vwkpMu
>
>
> I still cannot reproduce with:
>
> mkdir tmp
> cd tmp
> wget https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz
> tar xf netboot.tar.gz
> wget -O preseed.cfg https://pastebin.com/raw/K7vwkpMu
> dd < /dev/zero > disk.img bs=1M count=1 seek=10000
>
> kvm -net nic -net user,tftp=$PWD,bootfile=pxelinux.0 -drive file=disk.img,cache=unsafe -m 1G
>
> and appending
>
> ip=dhcp auto=enable language=en country=US locale=en_US.UTF-8 keymap=ansi hostname=debian domain="" url=tftp://10.0.2.2/preseed.cfg
>
> on the boot kernel command line. It does show up fine up to the reboot
> step.
>
> Any idea what is different with your case? (except the virtualization
> software)
>
> Samuel
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