Bug 789686

Summary: Video initialization problems on Toshiba Tecra A8
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy>
Component: grub2Assignee: Peter Jones <pjones>
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: dennis, mads, pjones, vserbine
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-08-03 08:19:05 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Attachments:
Description Flags
lspci listing
none
warnings emitted by beta6 at install/mkconfig time
none
grub.cfg file
none
screen corruption
none
screen corruption2 none

Description Clemens Eisserer 2012-02-12 11:34:55 UTC
Created attachment 561205 [details]
lspci listing

Description of problem:

I updated to Fedora-16 from 15, so was still using grub-legacy as bootloader.
Recently I tried to upgrading to grup2, by just executing:
$ grub2-install /dev/sda

which confirmed installation was successful.

However after booting, my notebook didn't get past the POST screen - except a few color blocks appearing on screen nothing happend.
I had quite a hard time getting the original grub to install, as it was obsoleted by the grub2 package and yum insisted on installing grub2.



Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
grub2 shipped as of 12th of February 2012

How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
  
Actual results:


Expected results:


Additional info:

Comment 1 Clemens Eisserer 2012-03-22 10:12:18 UTC
Just did a clean fedora-16 reinstallation - same result.
On my Tecra-A8 Grub2 isn't able to render its user-interface, whereas Grub1 worked.

I would be glad if somebody could have a look at this, as its actually quite a serious regression.

Comment 2 Mads Kiilerich 2012-04-17 19:14:02 UTC
How did you upgrade to f16 and how did you do the clean install of f16?

Comment 3 Clemens Eisserer 2012-04-17 20:54:41 UTC
I used yum to live-upgrade f15 to f16 and later migrated to grub2 manually.
When I did the clean install, I installed F16 using the XFCE live media.

Grub2 works after a reboot, the menu-screen however is garbled after a cold boot.

So this has nothing to do with the way Grub2 is installed, as it works correctly - it just fails to initialize the correct video mode when booting the machine cold. Grub1 always worked correctly.

Comment 4 Mads Kiilerich 2012-04-21 17:07:36 UTC
That might be caused by bugs in the VESA bios firmware. Please check that you are using the latest firmware from the vendor.

Comment 5 Clemens Eisserer 2012-04-21 18:40:59 UTC
I have the latest BIOS installed - however, although powerful enough for me (dual core 2ghz, 3GB ram), its quite old (5 years), so there are no new BIOS versions.

Hmm, it looks like this bug-report won't lead to a grub2 bug fix - so my wish would be to keep grub1 supported.

Thanks

Comment 6 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-01 11:40:39 UTC
To make GRUB2 behave in this respect as GRUB1 did please uncomment GRUB_TERMINAL=console line in /etc/default/grub

Comment 7 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-02 18:40:31 UTC
Could you also try the patch for sanity check of preffered resolution which is in beta6 rpm?

Comment 8 Mads Kiilerich 2012-06-02 18:48:11 UTC
The patch is included in the unofficial beta6 scratch build on http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=4121699

Install grub2 and grub2-tools rpms,
grub2-install /dev/sda
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Comment 9 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-02 21:16:16 UTC
"GRUB_TERMINAL=console && grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg" unfourtunatly didn't help, same result as before.

Is there any way to test the beta6 on F16, otherwise it could take a few weeks until I am on F17.

Comment 10 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-02 22:12:09 UTC
Please paste your resulting grub.cfg. Try removing modules vbe.mod, vga.mod, video_*.mod.

Comment 11 Mads Kiilerich 2012-06-02 22:52:55 UTC
@Clemens: Did you run grub2-mkconfig exactly as you wrote in comment 9, or did you do as comment 6 said? Not that it matters ...

@phcoder: He is on f16 and thus using 1.99 without any fonts and thus no video and already in console mode.


I think these rpms can be installed on f16 without any problems ... but the check for /usr-move might prevent it. A f16 build of the f17 rpm can soon be found on http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=4122604 .

Comment 12 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-03 09:20:15 UTC
@Mads: Oh I messed that up. I first edited /etc/default/grub with vi, and the ran the following command series:
grub2-install /dev/sda
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Sorry for beeing dumb, how can I download those koji-built packages? The page you redirected to doesn't seem to provide any download link.

@phcoder: Yes, if I do a warm boot (where the menu displays correctly) I get a console-style boot menu as with grub1, so I am in console mode by default.

Thanks a lot for looking into this issue.

Comment 13 Mads Kiilerich 2012-06-03 11:14:09 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> Sorry for beeing dumb, how can I download those koji-built packages?

Follow the green link to your architecture and find the rpms in the 'output' section at the bottom of the page.

> a console-style boot menu as with grub1, so I am in console mode by default.

be aware that grub2 by default also is 'console-style' in the video mode - but looks slightly different and often in higher resolution.

Comment 14 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-03 11:21:14 UTC
Thanks for the pointer :)

Unfourtunatly beta6 doesn't seem to solve the problems, I get the same behaviour as with grub2-1.99 that shipped with F16.

I also got some warnings during mkconfig & install.

Comment 15 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-03 11:21:54 UTC
Created attachment 588829 [details]
warnings emitted by beta6 at install/mkconfig time

Comment 16 Mads Kiilerich 2012-06-03 11:25:32 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> warnings emitted by beta6 at install/mkconfig time

anaconda created an invalid /boot/grub2/device.map for you. You probably don't need it - just move it away.

Comment 17 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-03 11:28:35 UTC
@Kiilerich: GRUB2 has a built-in small font and so can go to video mode without any fonts.

@Clemens: I still need to see grub.cfg

Comment 18 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-03 17:32:29 UTC
Created attachment 588900 [details]
grub.cfg file

phcoder: as you wish

Comment 19 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-11 09:15:47 UTC
phcoder: what conclusions do you draw, based on the grub.cfg provided?

Comment 20 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-11 09:31:53 UTC
Well I conclude that you're in text mode. Do collor blocks seem to be composed of character-sized rectangles? Can you attach a picture? I suspect memory corruption which fills VRAM with garbage.

Comment 21 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-11 09:40:37 UTC
Created attachment 590874 [details]
screen corruption

Comment 22 Clemens Eisserer 2012-06-11 09:41:01 UTC
Created attachment 590875 [details]
screen corruption2

Comment 23 Mads Kiilerich 2012-06-11 10:01:55 UTC
FWIW, my conclusion from the grub.cfg is that it doesn't look like I would expect after 
* installing beta6 rpms
* grub2-install /dev/sda
* grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
We might thus be making wrong assumptions and looking in the wrong place.
It would be convincing if you could paste a unmodified command line session that 'proves' how things are and shows exactly what is done.

(phcoder: it would be convenient if
* grub-install wrote the grub version to some text file in /boot/grub
* grub-mkconfig emitted a warning if /boot/grub had different version
* grub-mkconfig stamped its version into grub.cfg
)

Comment 24 Clemens Eisserer 2012-08-03 08:19:05 UTC
Just installed Fedora 17 on that Laptop and grub2 works like expected :)

It seems it was a bug in text-mode initialization, which no longer hurts because fedora-17 defaults to graphical mode instead.