Plymouth's hidden console contains squares instead of bold text on live session shutdown

[Daniel van Vugt]

Plymouth's hidden console contains squares instead of bold text on live session shutdown.

You can see it by pressing Escape instead of Enter.

It seems somewhat related to the fix for bug 1942987, which only preloads non-bold text for the live session shutdown splash.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2056526

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

I am seeing this in Ubuntu 24.04.1, in an actual install on a workstation with amd graphics and four monitors, but not on another installs.

The problem occurs:
a) only in shutdown messages
b) only in the default bgrt theme
c) does not happen in other themes I have tried: spinner, ubuntu-gnome-logo, ubuntu-text all work

The problem is with systemd messages for characters which are bold

The problem workstation has luks encryption and stops at boot to ask for a password.

changing the font int he bgrt them makes no difference

AMD graphics, four monitors one them a 4K monitor in non-scaled mode
kisak mesa "fresh" in use

If I install to a external SSD, I can not reproduce it. Even when the same kisak PPA is used.

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

PS on this same install, I also see this very recently, but I assumed it was related to a BIOS update in preparation for CPU upgrade:
[this is pasted from http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2056526]

Boxes that ended with black screen & cursor/underscore (static/not-blinking)
- dell [optiplex] 780 (c2q-q9400, 8gb, amd/ati cedar radeon hd 5000/6000/7350/8350)
- hp 8200 elite sff (i5-2400, 8gb, nvidia quadro 600)

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

In

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/issues/152

which relates to https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1942987 reference above, there was a comment from upstream:

"we ship a script plymouth-populate-initrd upstream that copies all the necessary files if you can hook into that."

I mention because I reported this problem I'm having upstream, adding to a previously closed issue:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/issues/233

Upstream made a change to their initrd-building script, but noted "This won't fix Ubuntu though, they use their own scripts to build their initrds that come from Debian"

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/merge_requests/336#note_2620849

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

Upstream can reproduce it (with a kubuntu live boot) , they say it is "weird" and guess: "On shutdown, label-pango is always loaded before switching the file system, but the font is loaded only when you hit the Esc key. Once the root file system is unmounted, label-pango no longer able to access system fonts, just what is located on the shutdown ramfs. This is why it can be a problem only on shutdown."

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/merge_requests/336#note_2621901

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes I know. That's mentioned in the Bug Description here when alluding to how the fix for bug 1942987 works.

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

There might be a race condition.

The modified script below allows the bold fonts to display:

The difference is the

ExecStart=- /bin/sleep 1

A value of 0.1 means the bold fonts do not render

a long delay (say 5s) changes in a bad way the shutdown process. The messages stop with complaints about a device in use.

[Unit]
Description=Tell Plymouth To Jump To initramfs
DefaultDependencies=no
# dracut-shutdown.service restores the initramfs when it is _stopped_
# use Conflicts to make sure its ExecStop has run before we do
Conflicts=dracut-shutdown.service
After=plymouth-halt.service plymouth-reboot.service plymouth-poweroff.service plymouth-kexec.service dracut-shutdown.service mkinitcpio-generate-shutdown-ramfs.service
ConditionPathExists=|/run/initramfs/bin/sh
ConditionPathExists=|/run/initramfs/shutdown

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
# Emit a blank message to force a dynamic load of all graphics libraries
# required for rendering text since it's a non-trivially large set, too large
# to manage manually in the initramfs. This will allow casper to render text
# like the live media ejection message after the jump...
ExecStart=-/usr/bin/plymouth message --text="Preload graphics libraries..."
ExecStart=-/bin/sleep 1
ExecStart=-/usr/bin/plymouth update-root-fs --new-root-dir=/run/initramfs

Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes