Arch Linux

mr-andersson

Member

Registered: 2020-08-06

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

Why is there a weird character in the "Load/Save RF ?witch" boot message? It looks like it jumps around sometimes.

https://imgur.com/a/s1ApHOB

Last edited by mr-andersson (2020-08-07 22:35:07)

GaKu999

Member

From: US/Eastern

Registered: 2020-06-21

Posts: 696

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

That character represents loading according to Systemd, it’s some loading bar like effect.

Now the questions...
Do you have an actual issue?
Is something taking too long during boot?
Are you using archiso and it takes to much time to boot because of said issue?

You may also need to post at least some info, like system setup and such...

If it’s an actual issue, modify your tittle to reflect such issue and add the relevant information to you first post...

---

My repos • Some snippets

Heisenberg might have been here.

mr-andersson

Member

Registered: 2020-08-06

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

No. I think you misunderstood. Please read the Subject and body that I posted. Also look closely at the image, and you will see that there are 2 characters that popup that are really weird; one '?' and also a '█'-character in the boot messages.

The first on line: "Found device 82578DM Gigab█ork Connection..."
and the second is: "Listening on Load/Save RF ?witch Status ..."

I've uploaded a new image, where I have highlighted the two wierd character with a red bar so you cant miss them -> https://imgur.com/rgxHEEn

I tried using both menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32 in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg but there seems to be no difference.

# Menu Configuration
# Either menu.c32 or vesamenu32.c32 must be copied to /boot/syslinux
#UI menu.c32
UI vesamenu.c32

For the system setup, it's just a completely plain fresh install of Arch x86 on a Dell optiplex workstation. It doesn't have a UEFI BIOS, so I use syslinux as a boot loader. So other from the wierd characters in the boot messages it works fine

Last edited by mr-andersson (2020-08-07 13:47:07)

mr-andersson

Member

Registered: 2020-08-06

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

Ah to clarify, the characters do not jump around. It just looked that way when I first spotted it.

Lone_Wolf

Forum Moderator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,922

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

When those messages are shown, syslinux has done it's job and transferred control to the kernel / systemd for some time already.

Check dmesg and journalctl -b  , do they also show those weird symbols ?

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

mr-andersson

Member

Registered: 2020-08-06

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

Ah of course! It's systemd that runs the boot services.

I looked at dmesg but couldn't see anything wierd there. Also from the "journalctl -b" command I found the lines!

But they appear correct when I view them after the boot is completed (see this image: https://imgur.com/zVMXbJJ).

Maybe it's some problem with the console font not rendering some color reset tag?

Last edited by mr-andersson (2020-08-07 13:44:41)

mr-andersson

Member

Registered: 2020-08-06

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Wierd characters on boot

Ok I solved it! It seems that the problem was the early console buffer, I added

MODULES=(... i915 ...) in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf then rebuilt the ramdisk. Now it loads to the Intel video driver earlier and the character glitches disappeared.