[Qemu-devel] [Bug 1407808] [NEW] virtual console gives strange response to ANSI DSR

[Nadav Har'El]

Public bug reported:

With "-serial vc" (which is the default), qemu make strange responses to
the ANSI DSR escape sequence (\033[6n) which can confuse guests.

Terminal emulators supporting the ANSI escape sequences usually support
the "Device Status Report" escape sequence, \033[6n, to which as a
response the terminal injects as input the response \033[n;mR,
containing the current cursor position. An application running in the
guest can use this escape sequence to, for example, figure out the size
of the terminal it is running under, which can be useful as the guest
has no other standard way to figure out a "size" for the serial port.

Unfortunately, it seems that qemu when run with "-serial vc" (which
appears to be the default), when qemu gets the \033[6n escape sequence
on the serial port, it just responds with a single \033, and that's it!
This can confuse an application, could concievably assume that a
terminal either supports this escape sequence and injects the correct
response (\033[n;mR), or doesn't support it and injects absolutely
nothing as input - but not something in between.

This caused a problem on one shell implementation on OSv that tried to
figure out the terminal's size, and had to work around this unexpected
behavior (see https://github.com/cloudius-
systems/osv/commit/b79223584be40459861d1c12e1cb67e3e49e2a12).

** Affects: qemu
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1407808

Title:
  virtual console gives strange response to ANSI DSR

Status in QEMU:
  New

Bug description:
  With "-serial vc" (which is the default), qemu make strange responses
  to the ANSI DSR escape sequence (\033[6n) which can confuse guests.

  Terminal emulators supporting the ANSI escape sequences usually
  support the "Device Status Report" escape sequence, \033[6n, to which
  as a response the terminal injects as input the response \033[n;mR,
  containing the current cursor position. An application running in the
  guest can use this escape sequence to, for example, figure out the
  size of the terminal it is running under, which can be useful as the
  guest has no other standard way to figure out a "size" for the serial
  port.

  Unfortunately, it seems that qemu when run with "-serial vc" (which
  appears to be the default), when qemu gets the \033[6n escape sequence
  on the serial port, it just responds with a single \033, and that's
  it! This can confuse an application, could concievably assume that a
  terminal either supports this escape sequence and injects the correct
  response (\033[n;mR), or doesn't support it and injects absolutely
  nothing as input - but not something in between.

  This caused a problem on one shell implementation on OSv that tried to
  figure out the terminal's size, and had to work around this unexpected
  behavior (see https://github.com/cloudius-
  systems/osv/commit/b79223584be40459861d1c12e1cb67e3e49e2a12).

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