[systemd-devel] Expected terminal type for sd-boot on a serial console?

[Mantas Mikulėnas]

On Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 20:38 Kevin P. Fleming <
lists.systemd-devel at kevin.km6g.us> wrote:

> I've got three machines which have serial (only) consoles, all of which
> are using sd-boot from systemd 257. I use Minicom, in VT102 mode, to
> connect to these machines, and while the console generally works, there is
> no 'highlighting' in the sd-boot menu. As a result it's rather difficult to
> choose a non-default entry to boot.
>
> What terminal type is sd-boot expecting?
>

None. It outputs text using the EFI ConOut interface, which is not a
terminal-style interface at all – it's more like the DOS or Windows
console, with discrete APIs for cursor positioning and text formatting [1].

It's your system firmware which decides how to translate those API calls to
VT220 sequences or something similar.

[1]:
https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Support.html#efi-simple-text-output-protocol

>
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