There's some problem with keyboard input in the root mount prompt ("boot -a" in loader(8)) - the characters don't get echoed when keys are pressed; pressing Enter usually - but not always - make them appear. This might be either a keyboard problem, or a problem with refreshing the display. This is on Thinkpad T420, keyboard is handled via atkbd(4), console is VT.
The problem does not occur with syscons, ie after "set kern.vty=sc" in the loader prompt.
I confirm this is a known issue with vt(4): it uses a callout to refresh the screen, but for reasons unknown to me, the callout is not called anymore on mountroot prompt. I tried to debug this but failed. Since then, I didn't have time to work on this again. So maybe callouts are disabled in this situation. If there is a way to detect that, then vt(4) can go back to a "synchronous mode" where it refreshes the screen after each typed character, like it does when ddb is active.
I have the same problem. Scenario: - updated from 10.2 to 10.3 - ataahci (which I was using) is not here any more, therefore root mount not found - boot drops to mountroot> prompt Result: - Cannot reliably input characters at the mountroot> prompt; sometimes some seem to be accepted - Machine needs to be hard reset for another boot Expected result: - It should be possible to input characters at themountroot> prompt
Fixed in HEAD with r331294 / https://reviews.freebsd.org/D14712; stable/11 TBD
Has this been merged at least to 12.x? Could it be closed? -- Martin
^Triage: over to emaste to comment on MFC possibility.
merged to stable/12; no more 11.x releases to come