Unpolished prompt for encrypted-disk passphrase

[Daniel Richard G.]

This concerns plymouth 0.8.8-0ubuntu6.1 as deployed on Xubuntu raring.

I installed from the live CD, and set up encrypted volumes. When booting into the new system, I am prompted for the passphrase at the splash screen. Unfortunately, the text of the prompt is not formatted to fit the screen, giving it an unpolished, un-Ubuntu-like look. A screenshot is attached.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

Unfortunately, things get worse from there. If the passphrase entered is incorrect, the error message partially obscures the passphrase-entry field (see attached).

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

The error message remains in place even as you type in the passphrase again.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

Even when the disk is successfully unlocked, the previous error message still remains.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

I also set /home to be encrypted---not at all an unusual setup---and the system doesn't appear to be aware that it needs to be unlocked first, resulting in more verbiage being dumped to the splash screen.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I have not seen this problem locally. Can you confirm that you see this behavior if you switch to the Ubuntu plymouth theme? This may be a bug specific to the xubuntu theme.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

The prompt does look better in the Ubuntu theme, at least as far as error messages are concerned. Still need a better way of displaying the long disk UUID.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> Still need a better way of displaying the long disk UUID.

Ok. So there is a longstanding request for word-wrapping in these messages, but that requires per-theme changes and is not straightforward to implement; I don't expect this to be resolved any time soon.

The other options are:
 - change the message in cryptsetup to only display the target name, not the source device. This might be ok; both are unique, so showing just the target name should be enough to let the user tell their devices apart.
 - use a different source name in /etc/crypttab, instead of the UUID. This would require an installer change. It also should really be something stable and unique - it's ok to *display* a misleading name (like "/dev/sda2") when your devices have gotten mixed up, but the real problem is that if the device name isn't stable, cryptsetup won't be able to *access* the device.

For my part, on a system installed before ubiquity supported LUKS, I just have /etc/crypttab configured to use /dev/sda2 as the source device instead of referencing it by UUID... with only one internal disk, this name is plenty stable in my case. But we couldn't do that for the general case.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

Would it be possible to reformat the prompt for a better fit? E.g. use UUID= instead of /dev/disk/by-uuid/, and maybe break it out across multiple lines, like

    ---- Unlocking disk ----
    Device: UUID=12345678-1234-1234-1234-12345678abcd
    Target: sda2_crypt
    Enter passphrase: [________]

(Of course, this really ought to be handled using a proper graphical dialog, but then this is probably not a common use case...)

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

I don't think xubuntu-logo theme is much different from ubuntu-logo theme, maybe it's just the case of low resolution? the screenshots provided are only 640x480 and thus there really isn't much room for all of these messages.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Would it be possible to add a display label field in /etc/crypttab and then use it when prompting? "Enter passphrase for the root filesystem" would be more user-friendly compared to /dev/sda2 or UUIDs.