Arch Linux

anno2100

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 15

[SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

Hello everyone,

I'm pretty new to Arch and  did my first install on my new laptop a few days ago.
I searched the wiki/forum and the web but could not find an answer or anyone else with a similar problem. I hope you can help me

I encrypted my hard drive using cryptsetup. I have an unencrypted boot partition and then an encrypted LVM volume with virtual root, home and swap partitions.

My problem is that when I boot, after the BIOS, I don't see a nice screen prompting for my decryption password (like I had it on my VM test install) but a lot of white lines that look like over pixilated text.
See a photo of the screen here: https://postimg.org/image/jjaia12k7

I can then type in my password and it unlocks my system but I'm afraid that I might have broken something.

Has anyone ever experienced something like this and could point me in a direction?
Thanks for your help and I'm looking forward to every answer.

Best,
anno

Last edited by anno2100 (2016-10-22 23:21:44)

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,419

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

That looks amazing.

Do you get the same issue when switching to a text terminal later on? (ctrl-alt-f1)

Or is the text normal after the password?

This could be anything from a bug in your framebuffer drivers, to a corrupt splashscreen, or just a funny font? It might be hard to find someone with the same issue. Good luck tracking this down.

Live CDs etc. work fine on this box?

anno2100

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

Thank for your quick reply!

Sorry I forgot to mention that after I type in my password there are about 10 more of those lines before it turn into normal text and finally my DE loads.

I don't have a CD drive but live USBs just booted fine. Maybe I have just to install it again to see if I made a config error or if something might be off with my driver.

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,419

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

If you can't find the cause, I think it might be more or less safe to ignore, seems to be a cosmetical issue.

Have you tried updating the kernel / initramfs? Maybe it will go away by itself.

The grub menu [if using grub] itself is fine too?

Since its a laptop, if it is possible to use external monitor, does the same glitch appear there? Sometimes displays do strange things when scaling up archaic text modes...

Last edited by frostschutz (2016-10-22 17:46:21)

anno2100

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

Thanks for your evaluation. I probably will just leave it. I mean security by obscurity doesn't work but if not everyone immediately sees that you'd have to type a password there it doesn't hurt either.

I connected an external monitor using HDMI. It only shows an image after  the glich is gone and normal text appears.

I have not tried updating the kernel / initramfs. But thanks for the hint. I will read up how to do this and post my results.

Ah and yes, the grub menu is in normal text, then it says "initializing ramdisk" which also is still in normal text and then immediately afterwards the glich starts.

ukhippo

Member

From: Non-paged pool

Registered: 2014-02-21

Posts: 366

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

You could try forcing a particular video mode during boot by specifying a “video=...” kernel command line option. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt

anno2100

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Obfuscated/strange LUKS screen at startup

Thanks for your help guys. I somehow managed to solve it. Actually I'm not quite sure how exactly I did it.

I rerun mkinitcpio and grub-makeconfig. During this I miss spelled something or made some other error which temporarily made my system not boot at all. I reread on all the commands in the wiki, set use_lvmeatd = 0 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf and did run mkinitcpio and grub-makeconfig once more.

My system booted again and this time without the glitchy font. Honestly I'm not quite sure where I made the mistakes but maybe it still helps someone if I write what I did/thought.

Best,
anno