Dear Maintainer,

I tried to use Debian Bullseye arm64 d-i Alpha 3 to install Bullseye
to a QEMU disk. I tried -device ramfb and -device virtio-gpu-pic
for graphical installation by d-i Alpha 3. But neither of them were
used by the Alpha 3 installer and text-based installation begun.
The full commands for starting qemu-system-aarch64 is as follows.
Host Debian Linux is ARM64 Bullseye, so I used -enable-kvm.

Note that ramfb and virtio-gpu-pci are only choises for qemu-system-aarch64, as
https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/ARM#virt_machine_graphics
https://www.kraxel.org/blog/2019/09/display-devices-in-qemu/

Best regards, Ryutaroh Matsumoto

Sorry I forgot to include how I started QEMU:

#!/bin/sh

ARCH=arm64
IMAGE=/var/tmp/qemu-disk-${ARCH}.qcow2
CDROM=/var/tmp/debian-bullseye-DI-alpha3-${ARCH}-netinst.iso
rm -f $IMAGE
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o compat=1.1 -o lazy_refcounts=on -o preallocation=off $IMAGE 20G
cd /var/tmp
cp /usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_VARS.fd .
qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -display gtk -enable-kvm -machine virt,iommu=smmuv3,acpi=on -cpu host -m 3072 -smp 2\
    -net nic,model=virtio -net user -object rng-random,filename=/dev/urandom,id=rng0 \
    -device virtio-rng-pci,rng=rng0,id=rng-device0 \
    -drive if=virtio,file=${IMAGE},index=0,format=qcow2,discard=unmap,detect-zeroes=unmap,media=disk \
    -drive if=virtio,file=${CDROM},index=1,format=raw,readonly=on,media=cdrom \
    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,file=/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd,readonly=on \
    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1,file=AAVMF_VARS.fd \
    -device qemu-xhci -device usb-kbd -device usb-mouse -device ramfb
# -device virtio-gpu-pci

Ryutaroh

When I run your command, I get a new QEMU window showing the TianoCore
logo and then GRUB menu on the ramfb. I can select "Graphical Install"
and it goes on to show a blinking cursor on the ramfb, and a text-mode
installer on the serial0 (can switch from the "View" menu). Is that the
same as what you're seeing?

To actually get the installer to launch on the framebuffer, I have to
add console=tty0 to the GRUB menu entries manually (press E, add it
next to "quiet"). Can you try that?