Causes:

Since beginning of Apple UEFI, Linux UEFI has booted with usb3 in bad
mode during the UEFI boot sequence. This was the case whenever the
previous shutdown was not a graceful Linux shutdown, ie. a crash, abrupt
shutdown by long press on power key or a macOS session. Because the wait
between a key presses and it being effective, boot is cumbersome.
Additionally, in the bad mode, timers are 12x slower so every grub
second is 12 s, and the UEFI boot additionally takes 1 to 2 minutes.

The bad mode entailed that mouse and keyboard only works for 2 s every
10-20 s with a type-ahead buffer of about 10 characters. The bad mode
was active during the UEFI phase until the kernel loaded from the boot
directory.

Linux always had usb3 problems, which can be shown by any computer with
usb3 hardware, and thus the xhci_hcd kernel module, over time shutting
down various usb devices or the entire usb subsystem. This is what
causes the console keyboard to be dead on a computer with a month or
more of up-time, forcing a power off should networked ssh become
unavailable.

Before kernel 4.8, the usb3 troubles only affected Linux. macOS and the
UEFI Startup Manager (option-boot) were not affected.

With kernel 4.8, the presence of a Linux installation affects the boot manager 
and regular macOS boot making the only boot option Apple rescue mode 
(option+R.) All booting not preceded by a graceful Linux shutdown is also 
extremely slow, about 2 minutes.
- The way to boot macOS is to boot Apple rescue mode that resets usb, then boot 
macOS
- The way to boot Linux is the get-around above

Additionally in 4.8, the xhci_kcd module, that is built-in and cannot be
removed, decides to halt the usb host controller making password input
impossible. This is what prevents booting without get-around tricks.

usb3 has been a problem in Linux since its introduction. It's time to
fix that.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1668105

Title:
  xhci_kcd module turns off usb host controller on boot

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