# German keyboard layout at geli boot



## bachmarc (Mar 19, 2016)

Hi,
The geli(8) password is asked very early during boot before keyboard is set to German.

My pwdpassword is too complex to remember where to press on a US keyboard while seeing German layout at buttons.

I know I need to add a line to loader.conf to get an initial German keyboard.

And yes it is a bug but geli(8) people have not touched my last bug report for a long time... I dont feel so optimistic with FreeBSD


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## kpa (Mar 19, 2016)

Don't get your hopes too high up. The boot blocks and the loader(8) run in a very restricted environment (so called real x86 mode of the CPU) where custom keymaps are a luxury that can not be afforded without some serious work. Once the kernel starts running keymaps are much easier to implement because of the frameworks the kernel offers, before that everything has to written in code that deals directly with the hardware.


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## bachmarc (Mar 19, 2016)

What to say? Why did they ask for the pwd in installer with german keymap? 
This completes my impression about installer tool. 
Hope this guys will never see debian installer with its lean powerful beauty. 

A lot of parts in freebsd feel alpha state.. I was never fast enough to report bugs in debian for essential things first... my geli ticket is on new for weeks now.


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## tobik@ (Mar 19, 2016)

Is the loader (i.e. just before showing the loader menu) or the kernel (after booting it but just before the init scripts run) asking for the passphrase?

Can you provide a link to your bug report? I only found this: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg....2015/freebsd-current/20151220.freebsd-current


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## bachmarc (Mar 19, 2016)

It is very early and I know freebsd startup not good enough to be precise ;o) but I have 

geom_eli_passphrase_prompt="YES"

in my loader.conf which strongly indicates it is before main boot...  unfortunately it is useless there because I cannot reproduce a pwd with more than [a-zA-Z]
I tried to keep it simple and used only special characters I know to find on a US keyboard but it is not working... the initial keyboard during boot is not the same layout as the installer's default us keyboard. 

Later the boot process stops suddenly and I get a second chance when kernel is loaded, keyboard layout set and kernel is probing devs and labels... a lot of boot messages mess up the screen meanwhile and you simply have to know it is waiting for you ;o)

Ohh my geli bug is not about keyboard layout... its about using a second pwd slot and backup/restore metadata. It is reproducible in a minimalistic vmware image and I think a pity thing if you lock yourself out...
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206600


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