[bug #48100] Booting in blind mode on macmini-2,1

[Stefan Monnier]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?48100>

                 Summary: Booting in blind mode on macmini-2,1
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: monnier
            Submitted on: Thu 02 Jun 2016 11:28:59 AM EDT
                Category: Terminal
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: Stefan Monnier
        Originator Email: address@hidden
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 
                 Release: 2.02~beta1
         Reproducibility: Every Time
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

I recently decided it was really time to start using the EFI boot instead of
the legacy BIOS boot on my old Mac-Mini (an original Core Duo macmini-1,1
which I upgraded to Core 2 Duo macmini-2,1 via processor and firmware
upgrades).

It all works fairly nicely, except that the beginning of the Linux boot is not
displayed.  More specifically, I first get into Grub (via rEfit), then I can
select the entry I want, it's all good, but when I finally decide to boot the
OS grub tells me:

    No suitable video mode found
    Booting in blind mode

[ Not copy-pasted, but written from memory, so the wording may be slightly
off. ]

The boot process then happens correctly but is not displayed until a bit later
(probably when the kernel loads the i915 module and takes actual control of
the graphics output.

This is on a Debian testing system, with package grub-efi-ia32 version
2.02~beta2-36, with a fairly minimal config file:

    % grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/grub
    GRUB_DEFAULT=0
    GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
    GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="fbcon=rotate:3"
    % 

Not sure if it's relevant, but this macmini is connected to two displays (one
via VGA and the other via DVI).  The firmware (just like OSX) only uses the
DVI output (so it seems that this hardware configuration is not fully
supported), but other than that it doesn't seem to cause any problem (the
firmware displays things fine on the DVI output, including rEfit and Grub, and
Linux afterwards happily takes control of both screens).




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