Subject: bug#36069: Menu-based installer unusable through noVNC

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:39:18 +0200

Hello,

Robert Vollmert <[email-masked]> skribis:

> There seems to be some conflict between the “graphical” installer’s idea
> of the console size and VNC’s (which appears to be noVNC
> https://novnc.com/info.html). As you can see in the attached screenshot,
> the screen is cropped on all sides, particularly making the menu choices
> unviewable.
>
> Not sure if relevant, but the console goes through a successful mode switch
> earlier in the booting process, where the VNC display size changes. Seems
> like that should happen again when the menus start, but it doesn’t.
>
> I’ve run other installers through noVNC successfully so there’s a good
> chance this is a Guix issue, can’t say for sure though.

I’ve never used noVNC, but doesn’t it allow you to zoom out or
something?  The kernel (KMS) knows what it’s doing, so it seems to me
that the problem is that noVNC doesn’t realize what the actual screen
size is.  Does the Internet have something to say wrt. noVNC vs. kmscon?

BTW, for your VPS, wouldn’t it be easier to bypass the installation
altogether?  That is, you write a config that you want to use, you
create a QCOW2 image or whatever is suitable for your VPS, and you boot
that directly.

Thanks,
Ludo’.