No LUKS password prompt - plymouth

[pigs-on-the-swim]

No luks password prompt - plymouth
NON root LUKS block device encryption (no initram involved)

Bug 1359689 Ubuntu or Red Hat(!) Bugzilla – Bug 1086972 are still valid.
With Ubuntu 17.10 in November 2017 the problem remains:
It is a Plymouth issue, not an issue of LUKS or NVIDIA or Linux-distro.

Issue: I have an encrypted non-root-partition (actually /home) and the whole lifecycle of booting, working, closing works flawless. Boot and LUKS will handle the process based on crypttab and fstab, no entry in inittab. Follows the (correct) specs and works well.

Except the password request.

Plymouth swallows the password request.

Here we do NOT talk about the initram issue - this is a slightly different situation, same bug. So solutions for similar cases do not work here.

Reproducible you can try to guess when the request should be there, manually enter the matching password and the mounting goes on well.

Reproducible, when you prematurely press "enter" during(!) the checking step the displayed lines shift up (and display an empty line). The password request becomes visible in this empty line after finalised checking procedure. Could probably be circumvented by adding more newline characters, it seems.

So it is clearly a display issue caused by Plymouth.

The request for password is fired up correctly. It is just not visible to the user.

I do not have a NVIDIA in the machines I implemented it in. It's happening on laptop with Intel graphics as well as on a desktop with A10 APU graphics.

Graphics card does not matter at all.

I do NOT use the graphical / picture grub screen, rcS has extended verbosity.

Description: Ubuntu 17.10
Release: 17.10

plymouth:
  Installed: 0.9.2-3ubuntu17
  Candidate: 0.9.2-3ubuntu17
  Version table:
 *** 0.9.2-3ubuntu17 500
        500 http://ftp.uninett.no/ubuntu artful/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.9.2-3ubuntu15.1 500
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty-updates/main amd64 Packages
     0.9.2-3ubuntu15 500
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty/main amd64 Packages

cryptsetup:
  Installed: 2:1.7.3-4ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2:1.7.3-4ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2:1.7.3-4ubuntu1 500
        500 http://ftp.uninett.no/ubuntu artful/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:1.7.2-0ubuntu1 500
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty/main amd64 Packages

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[pigs-on-the-swim (dw1-4)]

This bug affects many more users. It is present in Ubuntu 18 as well as in Fedora 27 (experience / both are on my machines).
This bug reduces the acceptance by "normal" users even more. I do consider fixing this stupid display error would be an important contribution to propel encryption with normal users.
Moreover: It is a bug and it devastates a great tool!

[pigs-on-the-swim (dw1-4)]

Since a few weeks I can see the line with the password request in Ubuntu 18.04 . Can not verify for Fedora.

[pigs-on-the-swim (dw1-4)]

The same issue applies for Ubuntu 18.10.

Other bugs have a similar focus:
Ubuntu [Bug 1359689] cryptsetup password prompt not shown
Debian Bug report logs - #752752 plymouth: cryptsetup password prompt not shown anymore
Fedora Bug 902400 - Plymouth doesn't prompt for LUKS passphrase

This is evidence there is actually an issue in plymouth. It is an obstacle for average users to use encryption.
Moreover feedback from a wrong password entry is not accurately visible - this is another handling issue.

This is more than a bagatelle. Please try to analyse and fix.

[pigs-on-the-swim (dw1-4)]

partly solved: In Ubuntu 19.x the GUI-Plymouth does request the password - fine!
In non-silent (CLI) mode the password is requested now. Issue: Other text makes it difficult to see the password requesting line. You need to be decently familiar to the situation to identify the password request. This can not be assumed.