My first thought is that your keyboard is broken. Liquid damage maybe or similar? keys getting pressed by itself. Even if you connect external one the laptop one still outputs garbage.
Clean it up maybe? test on live usb to see what the keys are doing.

It does kind of sound like a stuck key. Here's something similar with a problematic volume key:

Odd that UEFI works fine, but maybe it simply ignores some special keys?

Edit: At least on my system ^[[26~ is volume down. Not sure if that helps?

Last edited by whizse on 24 October 2024 at 11:43 am UTC

This is a keyboard issue in some way, but it could be both physical or software. My suggestion would be to try the previous kernel first.

The ^[[(code)~ is always indication of keyboard input. To see it intentionally you can type "read" as a command and start pressing keys like F1, F2, F12, etc. (ctrl + c to exit)

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear.

This is after my manufacturer logo and before I would normally input my disk encryption passphrase, prior to the operating system loading.

Instead of seeing the (semi) graphical screen to enter my disk encryption password, I get a Terminal-like screen showing the giberish mentioned above automatically repeating on-screen (not through my input, it just appears on-screen itself for a few seconds), followed by that error message asking for my passphrase, which never works.

There is no possibility of liquid damage on this laptop, and this laptop - which is still only about two months old - has never been subject to any sort of damage; it was also in a protective case all day, sitting in on the back seat of a car with nothing on top of it, so it's unlikely to have been subject to some sort of unknown damage.

I think this relates to LUKS, the disc encryption... But I have no idea why it has randomly done this, when I haven't updated or done anything else that might cause such an issue.

Edit: Actually, I just remembered that I did one thing prior to shut down this morning, which was "purge" Geary from Pop!_OS using:
sudo apt purge geary

I foolishly didn't read what Terminal gave me (e.g. additional packages being removed) and just hit "Y" (I figured that nothing critical would be removed), so maybe I broke something doing this?

Also, for s#!ts and giggles, I launched a "live" session, to test the keyboard using LibreOfice... I checked all of the keys, nothing appears to be "stuck" or otherwise malfunctioning, and keys that offer on-screen input (e.g. letters, numbers, etc...) all appear to be working perfectly.

Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 24 October 2024 at 1:04 pm UTC

If a key is held down during boot, the boot splash screen (plymouth on Pop_OS I think?) might exit and you get a terminal like interface.

Likewise, if you get random key-presses when entering a password (even if they are not echoed to the screen) you are not going to produce the right passphrase.

Not saying 100% this is the issue but it does seem the most likely.

Quoting: whizseIf a key is held down during boot, the boot splash screen (plymouth on Pop_OS I think?) might exit and you get a terminal like interface.

The only splash screen I see if the manufacturer logo (in my case, ASUS), then it briefly shows that gibberish automatically appearing on-screen, before the error message.

Are you saying I should hold down a particular key when I see the ASUS logo? Any idea what key?

Quoting: whizseLikewise, if you get random key-presses when entering a password (even if they are not echoed to the screen) you are not going to produce the right passphrase.

So you're saying that even if I am entering the correct passphrase (which I am), it's likely misinterpreting the input and thus, even though I'm physically pushing the correct keys, the wrong input is being registered by the computer?

What on Earth would even cause this prior to the operating system being booted?

Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 24 October 2024 at 1:09 pm UTC

As mentioned previously, a stuck key seemed the most likely culprit.

But it seems less likely if you don't have any problems with a live session.

The error message is definitely from plymouth:

"src/client/plymouth.c: ply_error ("error: unexpectedly disconnected from boot status daemon");"

This is the boot "splash" application that provides a niceish GUI when you enter the passphrase for LUKS. If that exits you are left with the terminal/DOS like text interface.

if you can easily unplug the laptop keyboard or maybe disable it from UEFI/BIOS that would be a good test to see if it still posts this keypress.

It still looks like its just spamming some key..but if its all right on liveUSB then it might have some strange software bug ofc on your current install.

Another hypothesis is that "^[[26~" is red herring. It might always have been there but hidden by the plymouth splash.

A broken boot sequence (the "unexpectedly disconnected from boot status demon" error) and not being able to unlock an encrypted partition might be signs of a drive failure... just guessing here of course.

It would be interesting to run some SMART checks on the drive and see if you can unlock and mount it from a live USB. Not really sure what tools would be best for that on Pop_OS?