Console/VT font is (randomly) not set (sometimes) on some machines. Stuck with the default VGA BIOS font.

[Martin-Éric Racine]

[Impact]

[Fix]

[Test Case]

[Regression Potential]

[Original Report]
Since the Karmic transition away from init.d scripts to upstart services has started, the font is no longer set at bootup. This results in unreadable user prompts, whenever applications output non-ascii characters to screen and it also affects graphic box characters used by ncurses, such as for debconf dialogs.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Sep 21 12:51:40 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: console-setup 1.34ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fi_FI.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
SourcePackage: console-setup
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic i686

[Vladimir-csp (vladimir-csp)]

Same in Natty.
But it seems to be the problem with KMS. Font and encoding from console-setup are applied to VT's just before KMS is initiated. And then KMS sets everything to default.
If you run 'udevadm trigger' after boot, your console-setup settings will be reapplied.

[Vladimir-csp (vladimir-csp)]

Or maybe I mixed things with Archlinux about KMS... But 'udevadm trigger' sets correct font and keymap after boot in Natty, which apparently does not happen itself during boot.

[Ivan Frederiks (idfred)]

This problem is still present in Precise. There is a nice workaround in #632382 discussion. Any plans on fixing this bug?

[Andrey Bondarenko (abone)]

I've uploaded bzr branch with fixes. If someone interested in testing, comments are welcome. Binary packages for precise should appear shortly in my ppa:

https://launchpad.net/~abone/+archive/ubuntu-fixes

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

unsubscribing sponsors as cjwatson will handle this

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I have unduplicated this from bug 632382, based on the implicit assertion in https://code.launchpad.net/~abone/ubuntu/precise/console-setup/fix-433897/+merge/118886 that these are separate bugs. I suspect that in fact many people's problems will be fixed just by the part of it that nominally fixes bug 632382, but I wanted to make some effort to separate them out for further analysis. Here's the comment I made on the merge proposal:

  After some thought, I agree that this Upstart job is the right thing to add, and I'm going to apply this to quantal. Thanks!

  I am much less convinced by the proposal to remove OPTION=FRAMEBUFFER (and still less by the proposal to force FRAMEBUFFER=y when splash is enabled; I agree with Oliver on that). I also don't think that creating a separate option for it is the right answer. If the framebuffer isn't enabled for some other reason, then the console-setup script should not need to run in the initramfs at all (except in the case of a panic, which is handled); the fact that this shouldn't be needed is what OPTION=FRAMEBUFFER expresses. It should be sufficient for the corresponding code to run from udev rules and Upstart jobs.

  Therefore, if the udev rules and Upstart jobs aren't working properly when there is no framebuffer code in the initramfs, that is what needs to be debugged. I believe this ought to be possible without running console-setup code in the initramfs.

For the time being, I'm moving this bug to quantal-updates to indicate that I'm not going to attempt to fix whatever part of this bug may relate to OPTION=FRAMEBUFFER et al for 12.10, and not until I have a better explanation of what's going on there.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

quantal has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the quantal task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Still happening in vivid :(

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Still happening in Xenial. There is workaround: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/console-setup/+bug/657551/comments/23

[Gannet (ken20001)]

Semi report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/console-setup/+bug/1449292

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Patch: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/console-setup/+bug/1565542

[Minimax (evgenuy)]

Bug still persist. Font settings (size) doesn't save through reboots.
Ubuntu version: 16.04.2
console-setup version: 1.108ubuntu15.3

I was found the workaround to fix this problem in here https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=759657. You need to add the following file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/90-setupcon.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="vtconsole", KERNEL=="vtcon*", RUN+="/bin/setupcon"

It worked in the my case.

[John Zaitseff (zaitseff)]

Ubuntu Cosmic (18.10) still fails to load certain fonts at boot. The problem is that setupcon has a bug in it that attempts to load the font TWICE, which fails for certain types of fonts. The attached patch fixes this issue.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

On second thoughts, I don't recall seeing this in disco. Maybe it was only up to and including cosmic.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

And yet the bug is in eoan.

[pt (trubini)]

I have to confirm this in lunar too! Wow, the longest bug I've ever seen (from 2009).
Can someone explain why this is happening in simple terms? I see the font changed correctly but then get reset just before the boot splash screen for some reason. I've tried both workarounds (udev rule and the console-font.conf) to no avail. Why is so difficult to set a service (which is working btw) to start later in the boot process? I don't understand systemd intricacies and quirks.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Fix font loading issue on Ubuntu Cosmic" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]