[Bug 924622] Re: [UEFI] GRUB 2 Blank Screen (no font)

[Xiao-Long Chen]

The included patch disables the generation of the lines in grub.cfg for
Ubuntu's smooth boot feature. That's what currently preventing the boot
on UEFI systems.

I've created a PPA with grub2 version 1.99-17ubuntu1 with the patch
included: https://launchpad.net/~cxl/+archive/grub2-efi

Please test by running "update-grub" with the new packages.

** Patch added: "ubuntu_no_smooth_boot_on_efi.patch"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/924622/+attachment/2845914/+files/ubuntu_no_smooth_boot_on_efi.patch

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/924622

Title:
  [UEFI] GRUB 2 Blank Screen (no font)

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 11.10 and Ubuntu 12.04 have an issue where neither the boot
  messages nor Plymouth are shown. This is due to GRUB2 not having a
  font to load (unicode.pf2) and therefore update-grub doesn't generate
  needed sections in the grub.cfg file.

  Here's a diff of Debian's and Ubuntu's grub.cfg (on UEFI), both on a
  completely minimal base system with GUI (to make sure no package
  interferes): http://diffchecker.com/IN68Vue

  You can see how Debian loads the unicode.pf2 font and also runs the
  "load_video" function, which loads the video modules needed for EFI.
  While it's for a different error, the Arch Linux Wiki also explains
  this:
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2#Correct_GRUB2_No_Suitable_Mode_Found_Error

  The problem can also be worked around by adding the following in
  grub.cfg:

  load_video
  set gfxpayload=auto

  EDIT: It seems that the linux_gfx_mode is being set to 'text,' which
  does NOT work with UEFI, as it doesn't have a native text mode (I
  think).

  EDIT2: After copying /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 to /boot/grub and
  regenerating the grub.cfg file, here's the diff:
  http://diffchecker.com/qu771dU However, for some reason, the
  workaround above is still needed :( I'm not sure what's going on here.

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