Bug 139982

Summary: boot "vga=788 single" gives no console display
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Reporter: John Reiser <jreiser>
Component: kernelAssignee: Dave Jones <davej>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 4.0CC: jturner, pfrields
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2005-01-13 18:22:43 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description John Reiser 2004-11-19 01:01:33 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0

Description of problem:
Booting with the GRUB line
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.648_EL ro root=LABEL=/RHEL4b2 vga=788 1
gives no display on the console.  This works in RHEL3WS and FC3 to
give a 37 row by 101 column character display [and single user mode].
 The harddrive activity light flashes as during a successful boot, but
the console display contains nothing [although it is not "blanked":
the LCD backlight is on.]


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kernel-2.6.9-1.648_EL

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot with "vga=788 1" instead of "rhgb quiet".
2.
3.
    

Actual Results:  Console display is empty: all black, not even a
cursor (but the LCD backlight is on.)

Expected Results:  Console display contains boot commentary, and
eventually a root shell prompt "# ".

Additional info:
Video card is ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF (1002:5446;
174b:7106) and /etc/sysconfig/hwconf says it uses fb0.

Comment 2 Dave Jones 2004-11-19 02:46:46 UTC
thats very odd, as FC3 is pretty much the same kernel.


Comment 3 John Reiser 2004-11-19 17:02:05 UTC
Using "vga=ask 1" works, mostly.  The 37x101 mode is not listed, not
even after entering "scan" and waiting a minute for the new list to
appear.  The closest mode is "8 030A  132x43", and entering "8\r" does
give 43 rows by 132 columns, UNTIL "Setting default font
(latarcyrheb-sun16)" changes it to 25 rows.  (The number of columns
after the change to 25 rows is too tedious to count, but looks like
more than 100 and less than 132.)  ["vga=ask" works just like this in
RHEL3 and FC3.]

Rechecking, "vga=788 1" does give 37x101 in RHEL3 (2.4.21-20.EL) and
FC3 (2.6.9-1.678_FC3), but gives an empty black screen in RHEL4-Beta2.
 Typing "reboot\r" succeeds in getting back to the BIOS and GRUB.

Comment 4 John Reiser 2004-11-19 18:13:30 UTC
Still fails after up2date to today's kernel-2.6.9-1.675_EL.  Also,
booting the FC3 kernel-2.6.9-1.678_FC3 using the RHEL4-Beta2 root
filesystem _works_ with "vga=788 1".  So something between 675_EL and
678_FC3 is the problem.

Comment 5 Dave Jones 2004-11-20 05:13:32 UTC
fixed in cvs


Comment 6 Jay Turner 2005-01-13 18:22:43 UTC
Closing out.  Please reopen if the problem is still present with recent code.