Public bug reported:
Cavium ThunderX-based systems, such as the Cavium CRBs and Gigabyte
implementations, have an ASPEED VGA controller that can be viewed
remotely using a JAVA application exposed by the BMC. The kernel will
use serial as the default console on this platform but, with the xenial
GA (4.4) kernel, boot messages and a login prompt would also appear on
the VGA display once the DRM stack was initialized during boot. You
could also override the console default w/ console=tty0 if, for example,
you wanted to do a d-i install over VGA instead of serial.
This is no longer the case with later kernels. The significant
difference is that CONFIG_FB_EFI is now enabled, starting with this
commit:
commit 44b343e7dd648d738a6b752a81c1ad60c8e0c9b0
Author: Seth Forshee <seth.fors...@canonical.com>
Date: Tue Nov 15 13:45:04 2016 -0600
UBUNTU: [Config] Enable various drivers for ARM platforms
This driver detects an EFI framebuffer device, and uses that as the
default VGA device instead of the ASPEED:
[ 6.426569] efifb: probing for efifb
[ 6.430174] efifb: framebuffer at 0x10000000, using 1200k, total 1200k
[ 6.436703] efifb: mode is 640x480x32, linelength=2560, pages=1
[ 6.442623] efifb: scrolling: redraw
[ 6.446199] efifb: Truecolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=24:16:8:0
[ 6.454324] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
[ 6.462878] fb0: EFI VGA frame buffer device
...
[ 9.320983] ast 0004:21:00.0: enabling device (0002 -> 0003)
[ 9.321192] [drm] Using P2A bridge for configuration
[ 9.321195] [drm] AST 2400 detected
[ 9.321202] [drm] Analog VGA only
[ 9.321213] [drm] dram MCLK=408 Mhz type=6 bus_width=16 size=01000000
[ 9.321351] [TTM] Zone kernel: Available graphics memory: 65994474 kiB
[ 9.321353] [TTM] Zone dma32: Available graphics memory: 2097152 kiB
[ 9.321354] [TTM] Initializing pool allocator
[ 9.321386] [TTM] Initializing DMA pool allocator
...
[ 9.696100] ast 0004:21:00.0: fb1: astdrmfb frame buffer device
A workaround for this is to disable the efifb device using
"video=efifb:off". With that in place, I again see output on the ASPEED
device:
[ 8.799297] ast 0004:21:00.0: enabling device (0002 -> 0003)
[ 8.799449] [drm] Using P2A bridge for configuration
[ 8.799452] [drm] AST 2400 detected
[ 8.799459] [drm] Analog VGA only
[ 8.799470] [drm] dram MCLK=408 Mhz type=6 bus_width=16 size=01000000
[ 8.799602] [TTM] Zone kernel: Available graphics memory: 65994474 kiB
[ 8.799604] [TTM] Zone dma32: Available graphics memory: 2097152 kiB
[ 8.799605] [TTM] Initializing pool allocator
[ 8.799614] [TTM] Initializing DMA pool allocator
[ 8.954255] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
** Affects: linux (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Affects: linux (Ubuntu Artful)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Triaged
** Affects: linux (Ubuntu Bionic)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Also affects: linux (Ubuntu Bionic)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Also affects: linux (Ubuntu Artful)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu Artful)
Status: New => Triaged
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1755304
Title:
Regression: vga term no longer active on Cavium ThunderX
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