Bug#522128: grub-common: "grub: No video mode activated"

[Justin B Rye]

Package: grub-common
Version: 1.96+20090317-1
Severity: normal

grub2's boot-time invocation of "background_image /path/to/image"
(as defined in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme) no longer succeeds;
trying it on the grub commandline returns "grub: No video mode
activated".  This is presumably related to the fact that running
"vbetest" eventually returns "cannot set VBE mode 3", but until
somebody manages to WTFM I'm rather shooting in the dark here.
         
This failure to set a background image is a regression from the
version previously in Testing, which was 1.96+20080724-16 (it's a
regression from grub-legacy, come to that).  I took an otherwise
similar computer and checked: before grub-common was upgraded to
1.96+20090317-1, vbetest and background_image worked; afterwards,
they didn't.  No other other changes - in particular, grub-pc did
not need to be upgraded to 1.96+20090317-1 to produce this effect.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i586)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.28.xan
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages grub-common depends on:
ii  base-files             5.0               Debian base system miscellaneous f
ii  libc6                  2.9-4             GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libfreetype6           2.3.7-2           FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libncurses5            5.7+20090314-1    shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime

grub-common recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub-common suggests:
ii  multiboot-doc              0.97-47lenny2 The Multiboot specification

-- no debconf information

-- 
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)