Re: [Xen-users] Grub interactive menu missing from Xen PVHVM DomU's 'serial console' output. All the other output is there - just the menu is missing?

[Ian Campbell]

On Mon, 2016-01-25 at 16:02 -0800, address@hidden wrote:
> I'm launching a Xen PVHVM DomU linux64 guest on a Xen 4.6.0 server.
> 
> I set up the guest to direct serial/console output to the shell/terminal
> I launch the guest from.

You mean you are either doing "xl create -c <cfg>" or you are doing "xl
console <domain>" after the domain is running?


> 
> Works like you expect - all the detailed info you want scrolls by on
> guest launch.
> 
> Except for the GRUB MENU with the menu-entrly selections.  Unlike with a
> "real" serial console where I see the menu and cann interact with it, for
> the Xen guest I just see blank space
> 
> 
>       Parsing config from test.cfg
>       got a tsc mode string: "default"
> 
> 
>               ( this is where you nomrally would see the grub menu)
> 
>          The highlighted entry will be executed automatically in
> 1s.                 
> 
>               ( then it continues) 
> 
>       Loading Linux 4.4.0-5.gb56b151-default ...
>       Loading initial ramdisk ...
>       [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
>       ...
> 
> I can enable
> 
>       sdl = 1
> 
> and then the grub2 menu and other output pops up in an X11 (bochs?)
> window, but that's not what I want.

FYI you can also use VNC, but that sounds like not what you want either.

> I'm trying to get a 'plain text', interactive version of the grub menu to
> show up in the shell/terminal window. No X required.
> 
> The grub config in the DomU is
> 
> cat /etc/default/grub
>       GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="root=/dev/xvda1 showopts noquiet console=tty1
> console=ttyS0,115200n8 systemd.log_level=info systemd.log_target=kmsg
> earlyprintk=vga,keep"
>       GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
>       GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
>       GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true
>       GRUB_GFXMODE="1024x768x32"
>       GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="keep"
>       GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
>       GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
>       GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND=" serial --speed=115200 --unit=0 --word=8 --
> parity=no --stop=1"
>       GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT="console serial"
>       GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console serial"
>       GRUB_TIMEOUT=10

The only diffeence I can see here vs what I would do is that you have
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT and _OUTPUT while I would just use:

    GRUB_TERMINAL=serial

I suspect they are equivalent though, or maybe it is distro specific (I use
Debian).

You have GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 and TIMEOUT_QUIET=true doesn't that hide the
menu[0]? I have "GRUB_TIMEOUT=5" but neither of the GRUB_HIDDEN_* options.

What is in your guest configuration file? To have the serial port of an HVM
guest come out of "xl console" (or "xl create -c") you need serial = "pty"
in there, although given that you can see the kernel messages you might
have that already.

Ian.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Simple-configuration
.html