I have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse that will not work on the start up encryption login. They both work fine at the user login and I can see bluetooth starting and the bluetooth icon appearing in the title box of the desktop. I have some bluetooth USB dongles on order to try, but wanted to try this in the terminal configuring files if necessary. I have the “nano” editor installed and am comfortable working with files in the terminal window if some detail is provided. I read about initramfs and found the .conf file. Is there something I can do with this or is there a better way? I tried a snap app that claimed to start bluetooth, but there were errors with the app.
Hello and welcome!
I guess your bluetooth modules and/or drivers are not loaded during early boot process. Therefore your bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work to enter a LUKS encryption password during boot. There may be ways to achieve this (adding modules and drivers to initramfs).
Another way - if it needs to be wireless - would be to use Unifying receiver with appropriate keyboard and mouse.
When a Bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work on the encryption login screen in Ubuntu it’s usually because Bluetooth services haven’t started yet at that stage of the boot process. The disk encryption (LUKS) prompt appears before the OS loads fully — and Bluetooth drivers and services are only initialized after the encrypted volume is unlocked.
Use a USB or Wired Keyboard for Boot
You can use this option,
Use a wired or USB dongle-based keyboard to enter the decryption passphrase at boot. Once Ubuntu is fully loaded, you can switch to Bluetooth and see if that works
Some wireless keyboards use a 2.4GHz USB dongle (e.g., Logitech Unifying Receiver). These emulate a USB keyboard and do work at the encryption screen.
This is an issue with bluetooth drivers not being loaded until the o/s starts. I had this issue and returned the keyboard. I bought a Logitech MX keyboard and mouse combo, it’s bluetooth and 2.4 RF, so will operate at motherboard bios level, which is what you need for your use case.
Thanks all for the replies. I was wanting to do this with the existing bluetooth module and through software only. I read on this site about “dracut”.
I saw, on another site, a method of installing the bluetooth module using dracut so that it would be available for the encryption login screen. I’m still on Ubuntu 22.04 so I will look into upgrading my OS and see what I can do with that. I’ll update with any success here.
