No serial console: VBE not available

[Toomas Soome]

> On 26. Feb 2021, at 18:54, O. Hartmann <ohartmann at walstatt.org> wrote:
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> hello,
> 
> running a FreeBSD appliance on top of a PCengines APU2C4 with the latest seabios
> (apu2_v4.13.0.3.rom). The PCengines boot image layout is based on pmbr/gptboot (GPT patition
> scheme), via nanoBSD the latest pmbr/gptboot binaries are applied taken from the 13-STABLE
> tree (or 14-CURRENT).
> 
> It doesn't matter whether I put these lines into /boot/loader.conf:
> 
> boot_serial="YES"
> comconsole_speed="115200"
> console="comconsole"
> 
> autoboot_delay="0"
> 
> and in the kernel config file:
> 
> options         CONSPEED=115200
> 
> while having alos in both cases
> 
> /boot/config
> - -h -S115200
> 
> following strict the handbook's suggestions.
> 
> After booting, I face always forever this screen:
> 
> SeaBIOS (version rel-1.12.1.3-0-g300e8b70)
> 
> Press F10 key now for boot menu
> 
> Select boot device:
> 
> 1. SD card SN64G 60906MiB
> 2. USB MSC Drive  USB DISK 3.0 PMAP
> 3. AHCI/0: Samsung SSD 860 EVO mSATA 250GB ATA-11 Hard-Disk (232 GiBytes)
> 4. Payload [setup]
> 5. Payload [memtest]
> 
> Booting from Hard Disk...
> /boot/config: -h -S115200
> Consoles: serial port  
> BIOS drive C: is disk0
> BIOS drive D: is disk1
> BIOS drive E: is disk2
> BIOS 639kB/3405336kB available memory
> 
> FreeBSD/x86 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
> (Mon Feb 22 18:17:30 CET 2021 root at thor)
> |
> 
> VBE not available
> 
> 
> 
> ... and its stuck forever ...
> 
> What is wrong here?
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> kind regards
> 
> Oliver
> 


You are missing this one:
commit 61c50cbc096d28e44cb8b627e524ae58158c423a
Author: Toomas Soome <tsoome at FreeBSD.org>
Date:   Sun Feb 21 12:32:18 2021 +0200

    loader: autoload_font will hung loader when there is no local console
    
    If we start with console set to comconsole, the local
    console (vidconsole, efi) is never initialized and attempt to
    use the data can render the loader hung.
    
    Reported by:    Kamigishi Rei
    MFC after: 3 days


The temporary workaround is to add -D, this will trigger call to vidc_init() and will prevent the hung.

rgds,
toomas