Bug#934492: debian-installer: installing drivers through preseed file causes black screen

[Cyril Brulebois]

Hi,

Wouter Wijsman  (2019-08-11):
> Lately I've been playing with creating my own Debian ISO files with
> some drivers in them. In doing so I have found an issue with the
> installer which is causing me some problems.
> 
> When I use the pkgsel line in my default.preseed file to install
> either the package nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms, the screen will
> go black directly after the installer installed one of these packages.
> It will not go back to normal, even after waiting over for 10 minutes
> and constantly moving the mouse and pressing buttons on the keyboard,
> but the installer itself doesn't crash.  If the default.preseed file
> automates every step after installing one or both of these packages,
> the installation will finish without other issues, even with the black
> screen.
> 
> When I don't have the nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms package in my
> default.preseed, I do not experience this issue. I have tested this on
> an Alienware Steam Machine, a Zotac ZBOX-CI323NANO (which has intel
> graphics) and in Virtualbox and I'm seeing this issue on all of them.
> 
> I think this is related to dkms being triggered, as I haven't seen
> this issue being caused by other packages so far. I hope this can be
> resolved without having to rebuild these packages to not do so.

While I understand why that must be not fun, I'm not sure I'd call that
a bug in the installer… You might need to take some extra step in some
preseed command to ensure DKMS doesn't kick in while you're installing
those packages, if that triggers such issues during the installation.


Cheers,
-- 
Cyril Brulebois (k...@debian.org)
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant


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Bug#934492: debian-installer: installing drivers through preseed file causes black screen

[Geert Stappers]

On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 04:45:15PM +0200, Wouter Wijsman wrote:
 ...
> When I use the pkgsel line in my default.preseed file to install either the
> package nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms, the screen will go black directly
> after the installer installed one of these packages.
 ...
> When I don't have the nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms package in my
> default.preseed, I do not experience this issue. I have tested this on an
> Alienware Steam Machine, a Zotac ZBOX-CI323NANO (which has intel graphics) and
> in Virtualbox and I'm seeing this issue on all of them.
 ...
> I think this is related to dkms being triggered, as I haven't seen this issue
> being caused by other packages so far.

Having a system preseed installed withOUT the nvidia-driver,
what happens upon `sudo apt install nvidia-driver`? (gets `dkms`
installed, goes the screen black? )

> I hope this can be resolved without having to rebuild these packages to not 
> do so.


I hope the problem gets clearly identified. Right now I'm not sure it is
problem in debian-installer  (but leaving the bugreport assigned to
the d-i package ).




Groeten
Geert Stappers
-- 
Leven en laten leven

Bug#934492: debian-installer: installing drivers through preseed file causes black screen

[Wouter Wijsman]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Lately I've been playing with creating my own Debian ISO files with some
drivers in them. In doing so I have found an issue with the installer which is
causing me some problems.

When I use the pkgsel line in my default.preseed file to install either the
package nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms, the screen will go black directly
after the installer installed one of these packages. It will not go back to
normal, even after waiting over for 10 minutes and constantly moving the mouse
and pressing buttons on the keyboard, but the installer itself doesn't crash.
If the default.preseed file automates every step after installing one or both
of these packages, the installation will finish without other issues, even with
the black screen.

When I don't have the nvidia-driver or broadcom-sta-dkms package in my
default.preseed, I do not experience this issue. I have tested this on an
Alienware Steam Machine, a Zotac ZBOX-CI323NANO (which has intel graphics) and
in Virtualbox and I'm seeing this issue on all of them.

I think this is related to dkms being triggered, as I haven't seen this issue
being caused by other packages so far. I hope this can be resolved without
having to rebuild these packages to not do so.

Kind regards,
Wouter Wijsman



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, 
TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled