System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

dif · Yesterday 01:22:15

Just putting out a quick warning in case anyone else hits this after a routine system upgrade.

After updating my kernel from 7.2.14.arch1-1 to 7.2.15.arch1-1, my built-in laptop keyboard developed severe chattering/double-typing (making entering passwords quite an adventure!).
Interestingly:
- The issue was completely absent in the TTY.
- It was heavy and persistent inside my Wayland graphical environment using labwc.

Downgrading back to 7.2.14.arch1-1 immediately resolved the issue, with no chattering present since.

Hardware & System Details:
• Keyboard: laptop, Dell 16 Pro Plus (built-in keyboard)
• Display Server / DE: Wayland / labwc
• Broken kernel: 7.2.15.arch1-1
• Working Kernel: 7.2.14.arch1-1

If you are experiencing similar input behaviour on this kernel version, rolling back or holding the kernel package temporarily might save you some frustration.

dif

Last edited by dif (Yesterday 17:44:21)

seth · Yesterday 07:33:04

double-typing … completely absent in the TTY … heavy and persistent inside my Wayland

Are other compositors or X11 affected?

dif · Yesterday 10:01:07

My Wayland compositor (labwc) and Xwayland were completely unaffected.
The chattering keyboard turned out to be a kernel input regression (likely in i8042/atkbd on my Dell laptop)—downgrading the kernel fixed it immediately, so I'm holding off on that kernel version for now.
By the way:

$ pacman -Qs xorg|grep '^[^ ]'
local/xorg-fonts-encodings 1.1.0-2 (xorg-fonts xorg)
local/xorg-mkfontscale 1.2.4-2 (xorg-apps xorg)
local/xorg-server-common 21.1.26-1 (xorg)
local/xorg-setxkbmap 1.3.5-1 (xorg-apps xorg)
local/xorg-xdpyinfo 1.4.0-1 (xorg-apps xorg)
local/xorg-xkbcomp 1.5.0-1 (xorg-apps xorg)
local/xorg-xprop 1.2.8-1 (xorg-apps xorg)
local/xorg-xwayland 24.1.15-1 (xorg)
local/xorgproto 2026.1-1

And that's it.
Perhaps I should use an i8042.* kernel boot parameter. Since I run a complex EFISTUB setup, I didn't feel like modifying boot entries when the problem first occurred, but now I'm considering testing it seriously.

seth · Yesterday 10:29:55

Your OP says it exclusively affected labwc but notably not the console, so the idea was to check other environments (or inspect evtest and libinput debug-events) to see whether your compositor (config) takes input from two devices ("doubled") reflecting the same hardware (where the second one shows up w/ the updated kernel)

If it was strictly the kernel you'd expect similar behavior on the console

dif · Yesterday 14:27:40

You are right.
Checked my baseline on 7.2.14 with libinput list-devices and /proc/bus/input/devices—right now AT Translated Set 2 keyboard (/dev/input/event3) is the only device mapping regular typing keys (the other keyboard-tagged nodes are just Power/Sleep buttons, Dell WMI hotkeys, Dell Privacy Driver, PMF-TA, etc.).

When I test the newer kernel next, I'll check sudo libinput debug-events --show-keycodes first to see whether a second virtual device is duplicating keystrokes in Wayland or if event3 itself is firing multiple times."

But first I have to sort out my EFISTUB entries, so I don't get stranded when I boot in linux 7.2.15.

dif · Yesterday 17:40:07

Update: You were right that it isn't isolated to Wayland/labwc—in fact, the behavior is much worse than simple key chattering.

After setting up linux-lts as a fallback EFISTUB entry and upgrading back to 7.2.15.arch1-1, the system now locks up completely at the early boot LUKS prompt. Every time I start typing my passphrase, the machine hangs mid-input before I can even press Enter. Because it freezes in initramfs, I can't get into the system to run libinput debug-events or evtest on 7.2.15.

Booted into linux-lts to recover and downgraded back to 7.2.14.arch1-2, where everything works normally again. It looks like a kernel-level input/interrupt regression that freezes the system under keyboard input—I must have just got lucky getting past LUKS the first time around.
Holding linux at 7.2.14.arch1-2 for now and updating the thread title to reflect the early-boot freeze.

seth · Yesterday 20:15:09

Nothing in https://github.com/gregkh/linux/commits … t/keyboard or https://github.com/gregkh/linux/commits … rivers/i2c

How did you arrive at the original situation resp. do you still have a journal of that boot (and a 7.2.14 boot for comparism)?

Arch Linux

#1 Yesterday 01:22:15

System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#2 Yesterday 07:33:04

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#3 Yesterday 10:01:07

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#4 Yesterday 10:29:55

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#5 Yesterday 14:27:40

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#6 Yesterday 17:40:07

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

#7 Yesterday 20:15:09

Re: System freezes at LUKS prompt mid-typing, Dell16 Pro Plus(linux7.2.15)

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