Re: Bug#785196: kfreebsd-image-10-amd64: Console has no output in qemu -display curses

[Steven Chamberlain <steven@pyro.eu.org>]

Hi,

Jan Henke wrote:
> Advanced booting options won't help here, since I cannot access the grub
> menu in the first place. I think the ability to use the local console
> with QEMU "-display curses" is quite an important feature and breaking
> it seems like a regression.

Was this an upgrade from wheezy or a new install?

I do actually prefer a text-mode console myself (it is much faster too),
but I fear it may cause problems for other users.  Some things will need
to be tested:

  * if text-mode was default, what happens when a drm2 graphics driver
    is loaded;  does VT switching still work then?
  * I recall the old VT would glitch sometimes on 'cursor left' (glyphs
    would be blanked out though they are still there); would text-mode
    reintroduce that bug?
  * does the text-mode console break any glyphs that were supported in
    vga mode?  (I think I know an easy way to check this in d-i)

We might consider setting text-mode or vga mode at install time
based on some detection, but I think we need to check the above first.
Furthermore, we should also set GRUB to text-mode in that case also.
Not having access to GRUB has made this problem so much worse in your
case, as you had no way to manually change to text-mode.

But that would still not fix upgrades, where this problem is most
serious.  If jessie-kfreebsd is released with vga console as default,
it should be carefully noted in release notes how to change back to
text mode before rebooting.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org