kernel freezes after boot when i915 firmware not available (regression?)
Hey there.
I always have a number of rescue boot USB sticks, which just carry a basic (non GUI) Debian unstable with some of the most basic tools.
Yesterday I've noticed, that at least since kernel 6.3.7 (but possibly earlier) these freeze after the system booted and the login prompt shows up ... and before I could enter anything.
There is no GUI involved (or even installed).
After some trying I noticed that when installing Debian's firmware-misc-nonfree package (which happens to contain the i915 firmware files), everything works again (which is also the reason, why I haven't noticed this in my regular system, as there, the package was always installed.
Now I'm quite confident that this worked previously without the firmware files. I was however only able to find 2 remaining such USB rescue sticks, which had an older kernel (6.0.5) and no firmware-misc-nonfree package - and that indeed booted without freezing.
So to me it looks that somewhere between 6.0.5 and 6.3.7 a regression might have been introduced.
Unfortunately I see only little debug output, as Debian's login prompt clears the screen.
What I did see (and what brought my attention to i915 and also the chance of missing firmware files) was a:
[ some time ] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] VT_d active for gfx access
TBH, that bug report is merely "for the records"... I mean it's worked around by installing the FW... so not really super important. OTOH, of course, console should perhaps work without that?!
Cheers, Chris.
PS: If you need more details, like hardware details, etc. ... just ask.