Hi,

after installing and using the current grub-efi-ia32, I got a grub menu
once, which filled the whole screen in the native display resolution
(1680x1050), instead of the 640x480 screen I used to get with older grub
versions. Then I booted Linux.

After a reboot, I don't get any video signal unless I boot a Linux kernel. I
get no video signal in the EFI firmware, in the menu when I hold the cmd (or
left alt) key during boot, in the grub menu, and in OS X.  So the computer
is now damaged and unusable until a Linux kernel is loaded.  I have no idea
what exactly caused this, but I'm using this Mac for more than a year now,
and used another Mac mini Core Duo a few years before this, and never got
such behaviour.  The only thing I did was to install and use grub-efi-ia32
1.98+20100705-1.  I used grub-efi-ia32 1.98 before.

For what it's worth, I'm likely to downgrade this for a while, until a
current version gets into testing; the version in testing has some
serious problems on all architectures right now that badly need to be
fixed.

Can anyone on grub-devel comment on this?  It seems remarkable that we
could be breaking video for future boots, and I wouldn't know where to
start looking.

(Full configuration details at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=588208.)

# Automatically generated email from bts, devscripts version 2.10.35lenny7
# downgrading for now to get other important fixes into testing, as previously explained
severity 588208 important

I'm tempted to ask (but you probably shouldn't try it!*), what if you
clear the BIOS/EFI state (NVRAM) in case it's been corrupted somehow
relevant --
hold Command-Option-P-R while booting
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1533
*WARNING! If it doesn't fix the problem, then you obviously still won't
be able to see... and, however it was configured such that GRUB would
automatically be booted is likely to be broken now, leading to
unhappiness :-(

(A safer way to investigate this thought would be to dump the contents
of your NVRAM and upload it and compare it to what the default state
looks like, if anyone knows how to do that?)

Does booting from a Linux LiveCD give you graphics?  (via grub or refit
or holding 'c' when you boot) -- both as some sort of failsafe, and it
*might* give us a bit of information. (disclaimer: I don't develop grub2
so far, I just use it [on my Macbook, using grub2 BIOS based since I
haven't gotten grub2 EFI to boot Linux very well yet], and read the
mailing-list)

On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 15:04:25 -0400, Isaac Dupree wrote:

[...]

I have a PC keyboard, and tried windows-alt-p-r. According to Apple
documentation, I should hear 2 beeps, but I don't, so I'm not sure if I
did it right.

I also found a way to restore the video in OS X. After a suspend and
resume the video is OK, until the next reboot. So I tried "nvram -c" in
a terminal. I don't know if this does the same, but it didn't help.

Regards,
Tino

Hi,

just FYI, I tried again the instructions to reset the PMU, SMC and run
nvram -c, changed video resolution settings in OS X, and at the end I
got working video back. *phew*

Thanks for your help and regards,
Tino

Hello all,

This is to notify that I experienced this bug today.

Following a re-install of my system on a new hard drive, I had to run grub-install and update-grub. As a result, the bug 588208 occurred, whereby I had no video at all until a linux kernel was loaded.

Machine is 32 bits mac mini intel with core 2 duo processor.
Distribution is based on Debian sid, and grub-efi version is shown below (2.02~beta2-22).

As in the e-mail thread linked to the bug, I was able to recover by:
1) boot (blindly) into Mac OS X
2) leave the machine go to sleep
3) video was back when resuming
4) In terminal, "nvram -c" to clear all variables
5) Reset NVRAM at reboot (cmd+opt+P+R) to be sure...

Not sure if grub2 updates will break it again?

I am happy to do any test if requested.

Thank you,

Best regards

Marc Truscelli

------------------------------------
#apt-cache show grub-efi-ia32
Package: grub-efi-ia32
Source: grub2
Version: 2.02~beta2-22
Installed-Size: 167
Maintainer: GRUB Maintainers <pkg-grub-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Replaces: grub, grub-common (<= 1.97~beta2-1), grub-coreboot, grub-efi, grub-efi-amd64, grub-ieee1275, grub-legacy, grub-pc, grub2 (<< 2.02~beta2-22)
Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, grub-common (= 2.02~beta2-22), grub2-common (= 2.02~beta2-22), grub-efi-ia32-bin (= 2.02~beta2-22), ucf
Conflicts: elilo, grub (<< 0.97-54), grub-coreboot, grub-efi-amd64, grub-ieee1275, grub-legacy, grub-pc, grub-xen
Description-en: GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-IA32 version)
 GRUB is a portable, powerful bootloader.  This version of GRUB is based on a
 cleaner design than its predecessors, and provides the following new features:
 .
  - Scripting in grub.cfg using BASH-like syntax.
  - Support for modern partition maps such as GPT.
  - Modular generation of grub.cfg via update-grub.  Packages providing GRUB
    add-ons can plug in their own script rules and trigger updates by invoking
    update-grub.
 .
 This package contains a version of GRUB that has been built for use with
 EFI-IA32 architecture, such as the one provided by Intel Macs (that is, unless
 a BIOS interface has been activated).
Description-md5: 0b211963be056bf8e983c31763cd0a45
Multi-Arch: foreign
Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
Section: admin
Priority: extra
Filename: pool/main/g/grub2/grub-efi-ia32_2.02~beta2-22_i386.deb
Size: 73068
MD5sum: 3a14c78cff07d78ecb359713e66592ef
SHA1: 40ffd1d70dc01f0cf704d5703f732d16ddc9a49a
SHA256: 13ec039cca2545e3a1b61cedb876a7a722e379e6a15045b977c7afbbc0ab8061