Full Disk Encryption Passphrase at Boot: Keyboard not working

Solution 1:

I had this issue with 16.04.1. The workaround is to edit grub settings to use "nosplash" instead of "splash". (Note that simply removing "splash" does not fix the problem, at least in my case.)

From grub you can do this for the current boot by pressing e on the menu, and then searching for the line that says splash (should be close to the end), and then hit F10 to boot.

Instead of getting the graphical progress display and passphrase prompt you'll get a text-based prompt, and your keyboard should work. (On my machine I'll still occasionally get a blank screen instead of the prompt, but entering my passphrase at this screen still works, despite the lack of feedback.)

If this works for you, you can edit /etc/default/grub (again, change "splash" to "nosplash") and run update-grub.

Even with this setting, my machine (still running 16.04 LTS) will occasionally give me a blank screen (very dark gray, but slightly light lighter than the black of the BIOS startup) instead of the passphrase prompt. It turns out that you can still enter your passphrase at this point, though there will be no feedback unless you enter it correctly. (In my case, the drive light starts blinking, and the screen "unblanks" to continue the boot process.) This happens for about 25% of reboots. Thankfully, I don't reboot that often.

Solution 2:

Ubuntu 15.04 release notes says Known Issues

It is not all good news however. Here are the known issues. All of which affect every Ubuntu flavour.

**You may not be able to enter your pass phrase if you use full disk encryption.
    LP: #1386005**

Solution 3:

I was struggling with this and in some page I saw something about this and drivers AMD... and then I remembered that when I installed Ubuntu on my fresh last install and use the full encryption all was working fine until I installed the AMD propietary drivers. So, I decided to switch from AMD drivers to Xorg and it just work. I don't know what does it have to do but it just work for me. I hope this works for you too.

Solution 4:

It might be irrelevant but I had the same issue and for me what worked was I created an usb key for my FDE by following the directions here http://wejn.org/how-to-make-passwordless-cryptsetup.html and follow the setup here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2197108&page=2&s=5a6803965cfacd8324f654aec5a03d97 then presto!!! Works with no issues. It will require you doing some homework first, but it works.