GUI installer through X

GUI installer through X

[Marlin]

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The ncurses gui installer works nicely, but the fact that it relies on the framebuffer means that GPUs that require firmware for it (like amd gpus) will not display the installer at all. 
This could be Solved by using a X server for the installer (even if it just starts a terminal with the ncurses installer). 
That way, vesa graphics would kick in, and users would be able to properly use the installer.
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Re: GUI installer through X

[Danny Milosavljevic]

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There's also a vesa fb driver so X is still not necessary.  (Our installation
media has already so much stuff on it, let's not increase it further)

For GPUs that are (sometimes) troublesome we should find out a way to
automatically blacklist the native modules so vesa gets picked.

Florian successfully tried kernel argument "blacklist=radeon" in the past--but
I think that caused either VESA or EFI VGA to be picked and made the installer
work.

There are multiple possible drivers for AMD cards:
* The (older) vesa (BIOS) driver
* The (newer) EFI VGA driver
* The (older) radeon driver
* The (newer) amdgpudrm driver

So we could blacklist "amdgpu" and "radeon".

(Unfortunately, someone that has such GPUs has to test it)

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Re: GUI installer through X

[Danny Milosavljevic]

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Note: In current master, "radeon" is blacklisted.  (See gnu/system/install.scm kernel-arguments)

We might want to extend it to "radeon,amdgpu" if we still get reports of problems with that.

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Re: GUI installer through X

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 04:33:17PM +0200, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> Florian successfully tried kernel argument "blacklist=radeon" in the past--but
> I think that caused either VESA or EFI VGA to be picked and made the installer
> work.
> 

Before modprobe.blacklist=radeon was added to the official installer’s
config file, I had to press the F10 key in GRUB and add
modprobe.blacklist=radeon to the end of the linux line.

I presume the installer does not work for you (i.e. the user is blind,
it does not display more than a black screen, even though key presses
are handled correctly).  Does it work for you if you add
modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu?

Using Xorg would open its own can of worms.  For example, Xorg does
not work well on Virtualbox on some other operating system.

Regards,
Florian