Bug#965026: [CONFIRM] grub-emu is unusable with orca nor BRLTTY

Dennis Filder d.filder at web.de
Tue Sep 8 20:27:20 BST 2020


I can reproduce the problem only by running grub-emu as root.  It is
reproducible in both the 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2 (Buster) and 2.04-8
(current Bullseye).

The severity is not an exaggeration IMO as afterwards your machine
will be headless.  Recovering with Alt+SysRq+k does not work; neither
does restarting the X server.  I had to restart the machine every time
I ran grub-emu as root.  If logging in remotely is not an option,
pressing "Alt+SysRq+r" and then "Ctrl+Alt+Del" at least 8 times in
quick succession should make systemd reboot the machine cleanly as
long as this feature was not disabled.

For debugging purposes I added this as the first entry in grub.cfg:

  menuentry 'halt' {
          set timeout=5
          halt
  }

In non-SDL-mode it makes "grub-emu" exit normally even without
pressing any keys.

I see at least two problems at play:

 * grub-emu in SDL mode does not react in any way to key presses
   after starting

 * grub-emu in SDL mode does not restore the previous video mode even
   after exiting normally using the above grub.cfg snippet.

I think only these options are realistic:

* have upstream fix the bug
* compile with --disable-grub-emu-sdl
* stop shipping grub-emu altogether

Unless someone stops me I'll file a bug in the upstream tracker for
this 14 days from now.

Regards,
Dennis.



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