Bug#617196: grub-pc: GRUB_GFXMODE silently ignored if font unavailable

[alex]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.98+20100804-14
Severity: normal


On a freshly installed machine without xorg, grub will silently ignore any
attempt to implicitely use gfxterm by setting GRUB_GFXMODE. Installing
xfonts-unicode and dpkg-reconfigure grub will fix this and enable gfxterm as
expected.

Adding a recommend on the font pkg would be nice, and a grub_warn in the
scripts would also be nice if the user sets GRUB_GFXMODE but font is
unavailable, thus disabling gfxterm. (Currently, the warning shows up if user
explicitly sets GRUB_TERMINAL=gfxterm, but unless the user read the scripts,
he wouldn't try to set this...). Maybe this only needs to be documented.

I'm not quite sure why the font is required. Using grub's command line and
setting things manually worked, and videotest displayed text correctly even
before I installed the font. Boot continued with the requested resolution
(patched via 915resolution.mod) without the "required" font.

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0
  APT prefers squeeze-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'squeeze-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages grub-pc depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.36.1         Debian configuration management sy
ii  grub-common             1.98+20100804-14 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 
ii  libc6                   2.11.2-10        Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1      2:1.02.48-5      The Linux Kernel Device Mapper use
ii  ucf                     3.0025+nmu1      Update Configuration File: preserv

grub-pc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub-pc suggests:
pn  desktop-base                  <none>     (no description available)

-- debconf information excluded