Subject: bug#26334: [PATCH 1/1] system: grub: Enable the use of a non-graphical GRUB menu.

From: ng0 <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2017 00:06:38 +0000

Hi Leo,

thanks for publishing it this quickly :)

Leo Famulari transcribed 2.1K bytes:
> On Sun, Apr 02, 2017 at 12:15:54AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > Would it be possible to detect whether graphical output is available
> > only in GRUB code?
> 
> I'm far from a GRUB expert...
> 
> Apparently, the terminal input and output devices default to the
> "platform's native terminal {input,output}":
> https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Simple-configuration.html
> 
> > Or is the use case a situation where graphical output *is* supported
> > but somehow undesirable?

Ludovic, for me this is for getting agetty work correctly with the
IN-Berlin facilities for their kvm vserver redirection to the real
server.
(going off-topic:)
I plan to get them into the loop of Guix Deploy. What's the status of
that meta project by the way? I don't live in Berlin but as I don't
think if Ricardo is even remotely interested (or has the time) to meet
with IN-Berlin and introduce them to Guix on servers. My idea is
roughly to check what their requirements for servers are, their
workflow, what they'd like to see improved and use this as a feedback
for the (yet to be developed) deploy function.
Furthermore I'd like to work an intermediate way for providing GuixSD
images which fit their use case without relying on myself as a provider.
Their requirement (as I see it from my position and experience with
them) is that the users ssh-pubkey is used for machine access from the
beginning on instead of password based login. So a way to define it in
the systemconfig would be one requirement I see.

> Yes, that is a potential use case. For example, I have a system based on
> an embedded system-on-a-chip that includes a GPU, but no physical video
> ports; I must use the serial port.
> 
> I also have this use case on a laptop as a consequence of
> <https://bugs.gnu.org/24948>.
> 
> For both of those systems, I've been using a different patch that
> has the same effect on the generated grub.cfg.
> 
> Perhaps instead of a graphical? toggle, we could expose the different
> values of GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT and GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Simple-configuration.html