Bug 166262

Summary: [syscons] syscons issue on DN2800MT
Product: Base System Reporter: Frank Reppin <frankreppin>
Component: kernAssignee: freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status: Open ---    
Severity: Affects Only Me    
Priority: Normal    
Version: Unspecified   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   
Attachments:
Description Flags
file.shar
none
DN2800MT-more-verbose-outputs.txt none

Description Frank Reppin 2012-03-20 00:10:11 UTC 
Booting into amd64:

  FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
  FreeBSD-10.0-HEAD-20120319-JPSNAP-amd64-amd64-memstick.img

will end up in an completely unusable shell.
The very first stage is fine - but as soon as you hit <Enter> to finally
go on and boot it messes up your screen and will not show up the ususal
kernel booting stuff. It will instead repeatedly fill up the bottom
line only.
Same (but not that worse) case on i386 - here it looks like the screen
is full of holes by missing characters. When typing it sometimes won't
show the character you've keyed in but only the cursor instead.

This is virtually the same issue matt encountered some weeks ago:

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=466365+0+archive/2012/freebsd-current/20120226.freebsd-current

The suggested (Jung-uk Kim) test did ofcourse not help any further.

Attached shar with hopefully useful output generated on
the system in question (when booted into 9.0 release amd64).

Fix: Just only a workaround...

1) boot into 'FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img'
2) escape to loader prompt and key in:
     load vesa
     set hint.sc.0.flags="0x180"

3) wait until it shows a weird colored menu
   (Install|Shell|LiveCD)

4) press tab twice and hit enter

5) key in (you're at an invisible login prompt):
     root


6) you're now logged in - finally key in:
     vidcontrol -f iso


[same procedure is valid for 10-CURRENT, except that you can omit
'kldload' vesa there]

Patch attached with submission follows:
How-To-Repeat: Boot (amd64/i386) into one of the new Intel Atom boards.
Comment 1 Frank Reppin 2012-03-22 22:15:41 UTC 
Guess that 'boot -v' dmesg is far more useful than plain non-verbose one.
Additionally - 'vidcontrol -i adapter' output.
(both in attached shar)
Comment 2 Jung-uk Kim freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2012-03-22 23:03:23 UTC 
Hmm...  It seems these platforms don't fully initialize VGA registers.  
According to the product pages, this board has "Intel Fast Boot 
Technology", which sounds like "we don't care about legacy VGA modes 
any more" to me. ;-)

I saw Intel's video presentation on YouTube and it showed a BIOS 
option to disable "Fast Boot" from Boot menu.  Try to disable it if 
you have something similar, especially "Video Optimization" or 
something.

Jung-uk Kim
Comment 3 Frank Reppin 2012-03-23 00:17:41 UTC 
Hellos and thankyou for looking into this PR!

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Jung-uk Kim <jkim@freebsd.org> wrote:
> Hmm... =A0It seems these platforms don't fully initialize VGA registers.
> According to the product pages, this board has "Intel Fast Boot
> Technology", which sounds like "we don't care about legacy VGA modes
> any more" to me. ;-)
well - when attempting to boot from the memstick images I can
clearly see everything - the whole 'BTX loader' stuff and everything
up to and until the 'Welcome to FreeBSD' boot menu. Up to this point
everything looks really ok. The 'messed up display' starts right after
pressing '1' to boot.

Shouldn't it show the 'BTX loader' stuff garbled as well then if they
don't care about legacy VGA modes then?

> I saw Intel's video presentation on YouTube and it showed a BIOS
> option to disable "Fast Boot" from Boot menu. =A0Try to disable it if
> you have something similar, especially "Video Optimization" or
> something.
Just re-checked on this. Those boot options are 'disabled' by default
(and disabled as well in my setup). According to the inline BIOS help
they won't do any magic beside not showing the fancy Intel logo graphic.
They too state clearly there that this won't affect capabilities when it co=
mes
to boot the OS.
There aren't any more video optimization inside the BIOS.

Please let me know if I can be of help to get this sorted.

cheers,
frank\
Comment 4 Jung-uk Kim freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2012-03-23 18:55:10 UTC 
> Hellos and thankyou for looking into this PR!
> 
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Jung-uk Kim <jkim@freebsd.org> 
wrote:
> > Hmm...  It seems these platforms don't fully initialize VGA
> > registers.  According to the product pages, this board has "Intel
> > Fast Boot Technology", which sounds like "we don't care about
> > legacy VGA modes any more" to me. ;-)
> well - when attempting to boot from the memstick images I can
> clearly see everything - the whole 'BTX loader' stuff and everything
> up to and until the 'Welcome to FreeBSD' boot menu. Up to this point
> everything looks really ok. The 'messed up display' starts right
> after pressing '1' to boot.
>
> Shouldn't it show the 'BTX loader' stuff garbled as well then if
> they don't care about legacy VGA modes then?

I am not so sure about that.  FYI, BTX uses BIOS int 10h calls and 
kernel directly accesses VGA hardware and memory.

> > I saw Intel's video presentation on YouTube and it showed a BIOS
> > option to disable "Fast Boot" from Boot menu. Try to disable it if
> > you have something similar, especially "Video Optimization" or
> > something. 
> Just re-checked on this. Those boot options are 'disabled' by
> default (and disabled as well in my setup).

Okay.

> According to the inline BIOS help they won't do any magic beside not
> showing the fancy Intel logo graphic.

Maybe you do not have the BIOS that I saw from YouTube 
presentation. :-(

> They too state clearly there that this won't affect capabilities
> when it comes to boot the OS.

Which OS?  MS Windows? ;-)

> There aren't any more video optimization inside the BIOS.

I see.

> Please let me know if I can be of help to get this sorted.

Sorry, there is something strange going on with writing to video 
memory.  That's all I can say ATM. :-/

Jung-uk Kim
Comment 5 Frank Reppin 2012-03-23 23:21:54 UTC 
Hi,

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Jung-uk Kim <jkim@freebsd.org> wrote:
[...]
> I am not so sure about that.  FYI, BTX uses BIOS int 10h calls and
> kernel directly accesses VGA hardware and memory.
I see - thank's for enlighten me ;)

> Maybe you do not have the BIOS that I saw from YouTube
> presentation. :-(
No idea - I flashed the most 'recent' one (0151)  quite soon after
receiving the board. The previous BIOS didn't had any other settings from
what I remember.

> Sorry, there is something strange going on with writing to video
> memory.  That's all I can say ATM. :-/
Well - nevermind then ;)
The 'workaround' (as described in the initial PR) to get things
working at the beginning is OK (for me at least...).

Again - thanks for having a quick look into this.

cheers,
frank\
Comment 6 timberwolf 2012-03-24 10:08:25 UTC 
Hi all,

i can confirm this bug on an Intel D2700MUD board too.
Funny thing is, that afaik only FreeBSD is affected by this, other BSD =
derivates and linux boot nicely. ;-)

Regards,
Jan=
Comment 7 bill 2012-09-05 22:20:31 UTC 
Seeing the same symptom - anybody have a trivial way to test this fix?

  http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2012-July/056443.html

(I'm not set up to build at the moment).

I found it via:

  http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-July/035366.html

-Bill
Comment 8 Eitan Adler freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2017-12-31 07:59:07 UTC 
For bugs matching the following criteria:

Status: In Progress Changed: (is less than) 2014-06-01

Reset to default assignee and clear in-progress tags.

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