Subject: bug#30467: GuixSD fails to display login prompt on headless server

From: George myglc2 Clemmer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 10:46:42 -0500

On 02/22/2018 at 11:41 Danny Milosavljevic writes:

> Hi George,
>
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 20:35:34 -0500
> George myglc2 Clemmer <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> I think we got side-tracked to the serial port when my real issue is
>> with the VGA port. Maybe my bug report was not clear. Let me clarify ...
>
> Oh, that changes things.  Ludo is debugging some silly UTF-8 problem
> with the virtual terminals on the VGA port right now - might be related,
> or not.  Who knows...

Well this problem goes back to November. The problem first appears in
my generation 19 ...

     19            GNU with Linux-Libre 4.14.2 (beta)           61 2017-11-30 19:18:15
     18            GNU with Linux-Libre 4.13.12 (beta)          62 2017-11-11 13:05:56

... which  correspond to ...

19 (GNU Guix) 0.13.0.5042-6e385
18 (GNU Guix) 0.13.0.4589-74bea6

Note: The results cited below are WRT my most recent build done
yesterday, guix (GNU Guix) 0.14.0.2455-26737.

>> GNU with Linuxlibre ..." for a couple seconds, and then 4) a blank.
>
> Is there still a cursor?

NO.

> What happens when you don't use the serial (so no console=...)

The VGA displays ...

- BIOS prompt
- grub menu
- 'Booting GNU linux-libre ...'
- ~1 seconds of messages
- Blank screen w/ no cursor

... which differers in that there are a couple seconds of boot messages.

> and then
> try to write something to /dev/console ?  It should show up somewhere.
> Where?  On the VGA port?

/home/g1# echo 123 > /dev/console

... shows nothing on the VGA or serial.