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

[Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org>]

Hi George,

On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 20:35:34 -0500
George myglc2 Clemmer <myglc2@gmail.com> 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...

> GNU with Linuxlibre ..." for a couple seconds, and then 4) a blank.

Is there still a cursor?

What happens when you don't use the serial (so no console=...) and then
try to write something to /dev/console ?  It should show up somewhere.
Where?  On the VGA port?

Let's try to find where in the chain it goes off the rails.

If writing to /dev/console manually works, try

ps -ef | grep mingetty

Are they running?

Also,

ls -l /dev/tty[123456] /dev/tty

> In either version, this config ...
> 
> (agetty-service (agetty-configuration (tty "ttyS1")
>                 (baud-rate "115200")))
> ... causes a login prompt to be raised on ttyS1 which, on my system, is
> mapped to IPMI Serial over Lan (SOL).

Yeah, okay.  So the actual tty-login-in works... *phiew*.

> g1@g1 ~/www$ sudo stty -F /dev/ttyS1
> speed 115200 baud; line = 0;
> -brkint -imaxbel

Looks good - login also works fine on the serial, so all is well there... :)

Now let's see what the problem with the VGA is...