oem-config does not respect the console on serial tty

[Oliver Grawert]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

using a preinstalled ubuntu-headless armel image that defaults to console=ttyO2,115200n8 as the only console option on kernel cmdline oem-config always displays on tty1 ignoring the serial console completely.

all input is taken from the serial console though so that you can use a DVI monitor to display but need to use the serial connection for keyboard input.

once done with the oem-config bit, the package removal (and all according debconf dialogs) displays just fine in the serial terminal.

apparently ubiquity/oem-config has a hardcoded tty1 somewhere when running in debconf mode.

intrestingly if a broken framebuffer setup is selected so that tty 1-6 can not be started on the framebuffer, oem-config displays just fine on the serial console.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Have you tried preseeding debian-installer/framebuffer to false?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

added it to teh current build ... lets see :)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't think it's tty1 that's hardcoded, but /dev/fb0. See open_terminal in ubiquity/bin/ubiquity-dm.

If the serial terminal isn't sufficient to support dialog, it may be worth trying DEBIAN_FRONTEND=readline.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Though it's odd that debconf works fine after oem-config is finished, according to your initial bug description, but that the terminal would not be configured properly when running oem-config. Can you take a picture of the terminal when running oem-config with debian-installer/framebuffer=false so that I can see what kind of breakage you're seeing?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

hmm, looking at oem-config-wrapper it seems that for the removal bit DEBIAN_FRONTEND=dialog is explicitly used

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

so after some more testing i found that calling minicom with a prefixed TERM=vt100 gets me a proper cursor in the debconf UI while i have no indication where my cursor is at all when running minicom with the default "xterm" TERM setting ... while setting TERM is a proper workaround for now, i think we should make the debconf side work with TERM=xterm. i dont see any code in ubiquity that sets TERM at all though.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

this screenshot shows the typical serial connection in minicom with the default TERM variable under ubuntu desktop

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

while the broken chars for frame etc are bearable, there is no cursor at all that would indicate which option is selected.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

works fine with proper locales set under screen, minicom still requires TERM=vt100 (or 102) to properly show a cursor.
given that we have a working method to be used i'm closing this bug.