# Entering GELI passphrase over serial console



## takeda (Apr 23, 2017)

Hi so this is something that I spent whole day yesterday, unfortunately without a luck.

I set up FreeBSD 11.0 with ZFS + GELI using standard BSDInstall. I can access the disk from recovery enter a passphrase and attach ZFS pool so the GELI+ZFS itself is fine.

Now, whenever I tried to boot I see this on a serial console:
PXELINUX 6.03 PXE 2014-10-06 Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al       
Booting from local disk...                                                     
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.                                             
GELI Passphrase for disk0p3:

No matter what I do I can't enter anything there. There's no response to any key, including pressing enter multiple times.

Some things that I already tried with /boot/loader.conf and /boot/device.hints with no luck, I (I suspect that perhaps this is early stage of the boot process):

loader.conf: (the console settings appeared to work fine when tried installation without GELI)

```
kern.geom.eli.debug="1"
kern.geom.eli.visible_passphrase="1"
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
comconsole_speed="9600"
console="comconsole"
comconsole_port="0x2F8"
beastie_disable="YES"
aesni_load="YES"
geom_eli_load="YES"
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
zfs_load="YES"
```

device.hints: (tried to disable keyboard, as suggested in one forum, but without luck)

```
[...]
hint.atkbd.0.disabled="1"
hint.kbdmux.0.disabled="1"
```

Also I tried to recompile /sys/boot with in make.conf:

```
BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT=0x2f8
BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED=9600
```
Then installing bootcode with

```
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0
```

Any other suggestions what to try?


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## takeda (Apr 23, 2017)

I forgot to add that this is on a VPS, and I don't have access to an actual keyboard. I suspect that perhaps boot loader is waiting for the keyboard to enter the password?


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