Arch Linux

Just upgraded the kernel and rebooted. In the text console, once it gets to the point where it does mode switching (the point where it switches from EFI VGA to the device-specific 'ast' driver), the text all goes black, but I can see red text (e.g. the 'FAILED' messages from systemd) rendered as gray. Everything else is black; it's like the color mapping got messed up somehow.

Nothing suspicious in dmesg or journal. This is just text mode console; I don't run an X server on this machine.

Previous installed kernel was 4.13.11-1-ARCH which worked fine.

Relevant snippets from dmesg, showing the point where it switches to the 'ast' driver:

[ 10.722006] [drm] Using P2A bridge for configuration
[ 10.722010] [drm] AST 2300 detected
[ 10.722031] [drm] Analog VGA only
[ 10.722051] [drm] dram MCLK=408 Mhz type=1 bus_width=16 size=01000000
[ 10.723487] [TTM] Zone kernel: Available graphics memory: 8201536 kiB
[ 10.723488] [TTM] Zone dma32: Available graphics memory: 2097152 kiB
[ 10.723489] [TTM] Initializing pool allocator
[ 10.723492] [TTM] Initializing DMA pool allocator
[ 10.863089] fb: switching to astdrmfb from EFI VGA
[ 10.867746] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x25
[ 10.868592] fbcon: astdrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 10.916345] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 200x75
[ 10.962491] ast 0000:0a:00.0: fb0: astdrmfb frame buffer device
[ 10.980032] [drm] Initialized ast 0.1.0 20120228 for 0000:0a:00.0 on minor 0


and the lspci -v for this graphics chip:
0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 21) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASRock Incorporation ASPEED Graphics Family
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 19, NUMA node 0
Memory at f9000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at fbc00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
I/O ports at a000 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: ast
Kernel modules: ast

My kernel parameters don't set anything related to mode-setting.

I can get a usable console by blacklisting the 'ast' module, but then I'm stuck at the super low resolution the machine booted up at.