Hi all, bevor we start, it is a VERY VERY SPECIAL situation i will talk about now. It could get fixed by a UNUSUAL approach.
The device we talk about as an example is the SURFACE PRO Tablet Series from Microsoft WITH a LUKS encrypted installation on the drive. Situation: If you encrypt the fedora ( or any ) installation with luks, as security of a mobile device indicates, you end up without the possibility to enter the password, when you do not have an in/external keyboard at hand. As tablets do not come with a keypad ( called TypoCover by MS ) by default, it's not possible to enter the password when Plymouth asks for it. There is simply no keyboard available, AND additionally since surface pro 4+, touch does not work with upstream kernel, so adding an OSK isn't helping. Solution until now: TypeCover or external Keyboard OR no encryption for the device. ## My Suggestion ## MS blends in a very basic keyboard when grub is displayed. I guess it's for low level repairs when windows fails. The clou is, it gets displayed and handled by the Surface Bios itself as it seems. With the help of this OSK on grublevel, it is possible to use an (nonexisting yet) envvar or a kernel parameter to pass the password down to the luks unlock part. (not to forget, to choose a kernel there ;) ) ## BENEFITS ## This would secure the mobile device and makes it usable as a real tablet computers should be used. It's also a way for other future mobile devices with touchscreens-only, how they could solve the issue i.e. linux smartphones. it gets really interesting as a standard way of how things should work, when you keep in mind that any mobile bios has already solved touch support for the device in question, because they have the urge need to enter the phones bios and do things like "wipe cache" "boot from .." "test graphics" etc. etc. which is then obviously touchbased. Opening the already present touchhandling to an OSK on startup as MS did, could be the way to go for all future touch devices. Your comments on this, please. Best regards, Marius Schwarz _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
