I've figured this out. I'm using Cockpit (264-1ubuntu0.22.04.1)
to handle the VM, and the web console has an 'Expand' button which
increases the display size. If you expand, the connection to the
VM is broken, and you get the "Display output is not active"
message. I've used Cockpit on RH and Ubuntu for several years,
with lots of different VMs, and never seen this before. It's not a
big problem though - you just have to squint.
My understanding is that the standard image:
is intended for text-only use. Is this correct? If I install this on KVM, and select the first menu option ('Live'), I get a usable console for a few minutes, but it eventually hangs up with a "Display output is not active" message. This feels to me like the kernel is looking for display hardware.
I'm trying to get a terminal so that I can run a manual wget/dd installation, over-writing the Qemu "disk". Thanks.