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Bug 1961092 - X fails to start when booting the installer in "basic graphics mode".
Summary: X fails to start when booting the installer in "basic graphics mode".
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Classification: Red Hat
Component: lorax-templates-rhel
Version: 9.0
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Brian Lane
QA Contact: Release Test Team
Sagar Dubewar
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 1942219
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2021-05-17 08:49 UTC by Jan Stodola
Modified: 2023-12-03 04:25 UTC (History)
18 users (show)

Fixed In Version: lorax-templates-rhel-9.0-26.el9
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
.The `basic graphics` mode has been removed from the boot menu Previously, the `basic graphics` mode was used to install RHEL on hardware with an unsupported graphics card or to work around issues in graphic drivers that prevented starting the graphical interface. With this update, the option to install in a `basic graphics` mode has been removed from the installer boot menu. Use the VNC installation options for graphical installations on unsupported hardware or to work around driver bugs. For more information on installations using VNC, see the link:https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/performing_a_standard_rhel_9_installation/assembly_performing-a-remote-installation-using-vnc_installing-rhel[Performing a remote RHEL installation using VNC] section.
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2022-05-17 12:38:14 UTC
Type: Bug
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)
anaconda.log (17.80 KB, text/plain)
2021-05-17 08:51 UTC, Jan Stodola 		no flags Details
syslog (372.33 KB, text/plain)
2021-05-17 08:52 UTC, Jan Stodola 		no flags Details
X.log (5.99 KB, text/plain)
2021-05-17 08:52 UTC, Jan Stodola 		no flags Details
journalctl from installed system (296.23 KB, text/plain)
2021-05-17 16:27 UTC, Jan Stodola 		no flags Details
View All


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHBA-2022:2364 0 None None None 2022-05-17 12:38:33 UTC

Description Jan Stodola 2021-05-17 08:49:10 UTC 
Description of problem:
X fails to start when booting the installer in "basic graphics mode".

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
RHEL-9.0.0-20210516.2
anaconda-34.25.0.3-1.el9
lorax-34.9.1-2.el9
lorax-templates-rhel-9.0-18.el9

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot from boot.iso
2. In the boot menu, select "Troubleshooting" -> "Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0.0 in basic graphics mode"

Actual results:
X or window manager failed, falling back to text mode.

Expected results:
X starts successfully.
Comment 1 Jan Stodola 2021-05-17 08:51:38 UTC 
Created attachment 1783971 [details]
anaconda.log
Comment 2 Jan Stodola 2021-05-17 08:52:05 UTC 
Created attachment 1783972 [details]
syslog
Comment 3 Jan Stodola 2021-05-17 08:52:35 UTC 
Created attachment 1783973 [details]
X.log
Comment 4 Jan Stodola 2021-05-17 16:27:09 UTC 
Created attachment 1784159 [details]
journalctl from installed system

The same problem exists on an installed system. When booting with "nomodeset" on the kernel command line, X won't start. Re-assigning to Xorg for review.
Comment 5 Adam Jackson 2021-05-20 14:19:09 UTC 
"Basic graphics" is a terrible name and we need to call it "emergency graphics" or something. If we keep it. But I wish we wouldn't keep it. One recurring issue we see is people choosing basic graphics because they think it's the safest choice and then wondering why gfx is so slow after installation, because the 'nomodeset' you added to kcmdline to get basic graphics will get propagated into the installed system's grub.conf.

At root, the issue here is there is no longer a vesa driver in RHEL9. When you say 'nomodeset' on the kernel command line it disables all KMS drivers. The only other kind of X driver is fbdev, which would work just fine on UEFI systems, but here you've chosen to boot your virtual machine with BIOS instead. Which means you have asked the kernel to disable graphics entirely.

I'm not sure what else to do here besides remove the basic graphics option from the boot menu, which would be a lorax template issue. If there's really a need to keep a "basic" mode the best we can give you is disabling graphics acceleration, but I'd kind of like to see an existence proof of its necessity first, and a Really Good Reason why they can't use vnc instead.
Comment 6 Brian Lane 2021-05-20 15:37:19 UTC 
Would it make sense to remove this and replace it with a menu entry to boot in text mode by only adding inst.text? This would make anaconda prompt for vnc use and not start X but also not mess with propagating settings to the installed system.

Changing this would also require documentations changes where we could explain in more detail why nomodeset really isn't the right thing to use anymore.
Comment 7 Adam Jackson 2021-05-20 16:01:56 UTC 
> Would it make sense to remove this and replace it with a menu entry to boot in text mode by only adding inst.text? This would make anaconda prompt for vnc use and not start X but also not mess with propagating settings to the installed system.

That sounds good to me, sure.

> Changing this would also require documentations changes where we could explain in more detail why nomodeset really isn't the right thing to use anymore.

I'm happy to help with the doc content here.
Comment 9 Brian Lane 2021-07-22 20:34:48 UTC 
(In reply to Adam Jackson from comment #7)
> > Would it make sense to remove this and replace it with a menu entry to boot in text mode by only adding inst.text? This would make anaconda prompt for vnc use and not start X but also not mess with propagating settings to the installed system.
> 
> That sounds good to me, sure.
> 
> > Changing this would also require documentations changes where we could explain in more detail why nomodeset really isn't the right thing to use anymore.
> 
> I'm happy to help with the doc content here.

Sorry, this slipped my attention for a bit. So I tried to change things upstream in Fedora and has some people claiming that nomodeset still helps them in some situations. Is this something that's different between the Fedora and RHEL kernels maybe?

https://github.com/weldr/lorax/pull/1152
Comment 10 Adam Williamson 2021-07-22 22:39:46 UTC 
I don't think there's really a technical difference, but there may be a philosophy/user base difference. With Fedora we still kinda want to do what we can to make it work graphically on $RANDOM_USER_HARDWARE. "Basic graphics" does still sometimes help there, if e.g. someone is using a new NVIDIA adapter that doesn't work with 'native' drivers or something. That may be less important on RHEL, where we have some notion of "supported hardware", and we're less bothered about desktop use in general...

I can see "remove it on RHEL, keep it on Fedora" as a possible outcome here, honestly. And renaming it to something scarier isn't a bad idea either.
Comment 21 Brian Lane 2021-10-19 18:06:48 UTC 
Here's a pull request for c9s, we just need an ITM set.


https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/rpms/lorax-templates-rhel/-/merge_requests/21

(This won't be going into Fedora, just RHEL 9)
Comment 22 Neal Gompa 2021-10-26 15:30:01 UTC 
JFYI, I think it would be worth revisiting with Javier's work on SimpleDRM enablement. That eliminates all the issues around fbdev and rationalizes the graphics pipeline (we can use Wayland from the very beginning, etc.). I do also think it's worth considering renaming it from "basic graphics" to "failsafe graphics" or something similar.

References:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ReplaceFbdevDrivers
* https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2021-October/328704.html
* Bug 1986223
Comment 42 errata-xmlrpc 2022-05-17 12:38:14 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (new packages: lorax-templates-rhel), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2022:2364
Comment 44 Red Hat Bugzilla 2023-12-03 04:25:05 UTC 
The needinfo request[s] on this closed bug have been removed as they have been unresolved for 120 days
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