[WORKAROUND] 17.1RC1 boot not showing anything

[stormy]

downloaded the latest "vga" 17.1 RC1 image (confirmed the MD5sum is OK), dd'd into a USB stick, put into a small Intel dedicated box, with 8GB / 128GB SSD, see the menu, choose "1", it prints a bunch of lines:

/boot/kernel/*.ko size ... at ...
then:
Booting...

with some info about EFI, but nothing changes after that.  The box has an HDMI connection that is connected to a monitor.

1) Does the "vga" version imply i must actually use a "VGA" connection?

2) How to debug this? 

Here is what I did so far:

Tried in more options to turn "Verbose", but get no more info.

The usb light is not blinking so i know it's not reading from it...

on last lines it says: Dimentions 800 x 600

but this TFT display is 7" and specs say 800x480, could that be it?

is there a way to boot with different resolution?

Took the USB and tried to mount it error must specify the ufs type (on ubunto), got it to work with:

mount -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=sun /dev/sdb3 /mnt

but then ls on /mnt returns many errors of incorrect size and Input/Output error...

also same errors happen when taking the OPNSense*.img and trying:

kpartx -va OPNs...

it gets the /dev/mapper/loop0p1 & loop0p2, but same errors when mounting p2..    how is it possible to loop mount the image?  Just to look around and see if there is anything about resolution.

meanwhile searching for a larger/standard monitor.

Stormy.

[stormy]

figured how to loopmount the images, and usb, need to use *44bsd*, see:

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=4321.0

also, the boot issue is resolved by using opnsense 16.7, so this appears to be an issue w/17.1RC1

[stormy]

Reported as: https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/1343

[franco]

Let's try something first...

1. Escape to loader prompt (3)
2. Type: set comconsole="efi"
3. Type: boot

If this doesn't work, try again with an additional one:

set kern.vty="vt"


Cheers,
Franco

[stormy]

Did the: set comconsole="efi"  at prompt, then boot, it comes up to the exact same screen, attempting EFI framebuffer at 800x600 and nothing after it.

second time added

Code: [Select]

set kern.vty="vt"
this time it booted all the way, then typed "installer" and it logged to the full-screen installer!!!  Great job!!

At this point I was curious, so did a 3rd test with ONLY the "vt" option, and that worked as well.  It may be that "comconsole=efi" is also good, but for this particular issue, the "vty=vt" was the thing that fixed it.

Thanks.

[stormy]

post install, had to modify: /boot/loader.conf.local with the "vt" option, otherwise subsequent reboots hang the same way.  So, now my install uses the "vt" and all is fine.

[franco]

We're adding a GUI switch for that in time for 17.1.

Unfortunately, this hints to changes that were made when transitioning from "sc" to "vt" because using "sc" doesn't work like it used to on 16.7.


Cheers,
Franco