Re: Loading splash ok -> <reset>, how to debug?

On Sun, Jun 8, 2025, 11:04 PM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Jun 8, 2025, at 20:57, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jun 8, 2025, 8:16 PM Bjoern A. Zeeb <
> bzeeb-lists@lists.zabbadoz.net> wrote:
> >> On Sun, 8 Jun 2025, Mark Millard wrote:
> >>
> >> > Bjoern A. Zeeb <bzeeb-lists_at_lists.zabbadoz.net> wrote on
> >> > Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2025 01:29:50 UTC :
> >> >
> >> >> . . .
> >> >>
> >> >> I turned beastie back on and by default it thinks it's booting using
> >> >> video; when I toggle through to serial it seems to boot; now that
> >> >> might be the accidental "working now".
> >> >>
> >> >> Where does that menu get it's values from compared to the console
> >> >> variable?
> >> >>
> >> >> Not toggling the menu I see:
> >> >> console=efi,comconsole
> >> >
> >> > Despite the lack of updated to the various man loader* pages,
> >> > comconsole was removed/replaced with eficom in (2023):
> >>
> >> Oh that's funny...
> >>
> >> I have a feeling a few setenv calls in that code need to become
> >> conditionals...  or there is a mapping somewhere ...  otherwise
> >> comconsole makes little sense...
> >
> > Comconsole today is just an alias on aarch64...
>
> When attempted in loader.efi on aarch64 I get:
>
> OK set console="comconsole"
> console comconsole is unavailable
> no valid consoles!
> Available consoles:
>     efi
>     eficom
> OK set console="efi eficom"
> console eficom failed to initialize
> OK set console="efi,eficom"
> console eficom failed to initialize
> OK set console="eficom efi"
> OK set console="eficom,efi"
> OK set console=eficom,efi
> OK set console=eficom efi
> wrong number of arguments
>
> (But this involves the possibly odd EDK2 context.)
>
> It appears that eficom always has to be first when
> both are listed in an accepted syntax.
>

You rarely want both. Only when edk2 isn't already redirected to the serial
console does it make sense. Efi console isn't like vidconsole of old that
needed it. Eficom isn't better documented in part because nobody has
mentioned it to me as confusing in many years before this thread. And once
I get the dozen other, higher priority things off my plate, I was going to
revisit. It's a mess right now since we should have introduced efivideo
ages ago that's just the screen.

This behavior is correct: you have to quote strings if they have spaces in
them. Spaces are an alias: commas are preferred and documented going back
to the 4th loader. it's just the way set has always worked.

> Also some versions seem to use space separaters while others use a
> > comma...
> >
> > I'd love to fix that. Do you have an example.
>
> As near as I can from the above, both "," and " " are
> allowed alternatives when qouted strings are used.
>

No bugs in this detail have been demonstrated. It's an irrelevant side
issue that's not helpful or relevant. I get debugging problems like this
are hard, but making snide remarks that got us down here aren't helpful or
useful. It's unclear if there is an issue with net booting, with a
corrupted kernel, with dtb hand-off (which might be broken or incomplete: I
have to set the order to prefer acpi often). There are a number of
additional sharp edges for some boards. It's not like x86 where it's more
standardized.

Warner

===
> Mark Millard
> marklmi at yahoo.com
>
>