Arch boot: Echo asterisks when typing cryptsetup password

I am trying to setup my initramfs with mkinitcpio -P so it decrypts my LUKS/LVM partition containing the root file system on startup. I followed the steps on here . Everything already works fine, by adding HOOKs encrypt and lvm2 among others, see mkinitcpio.conf below. Now I would like to have asterisk characters being echoed when I enter the password for the LUKS encrypted partition. I found a nice command line tool for doing so: systemd-ask-password. So I modified /etc/mkinitcpio.conf accordingly, so it adds systemd-ask-password as a binary, and /usr/lib/initcpio/hooks/encrypt to use systemd-ask-password for querying the password and pipe the output to cryptsetup and ran mkinitcpio -P. But it does not mask the password characters with asterisks! It echoes them one by one, which is not secure and not what I intended. In a readily booted system, in a regular terminal and bash, it works perfectly fine. But it seems like the "terminal" during bootup behaves differently. Or the systemd-ask-password command behaves differently in that environment. How can I get systemd-ask-password to work properly in the boot terminal environment? Or: Is there a better way to achieve what I want, to echo the password characters as asterisks? /usr/lib/initcpio/hooks/encrypt: #!/usr/bin/ash run_hook() { modprobe -a -q dm-crypt >/dev/null 2>&1 [ "${quiet}" = "y" ] && CSQUIET=">/dev/null" # Get keyfile if specified ckeyfile="/crypto_keyfile.bin" if [ -n "$cryptkey" ]; then IFS=: read ckdev ckarg1 ckarg2 /dev/null 2>&1 umount /ckey ;; *) # Read raw data from the block device # ckarg1 is numeric: ckarg1=offset, ckarg2=length dd if="$resolved" of="$ckeyfile" bs=1 skip="$ckarg1" count="$ckarg2" >/dev/null 2>&1 ;; esac fi [ ! -f ${ckeyfile} ] && echo "Keyfile could not be opened. Reverting to passphrase." fi if [ -n "${cryptdevice}" ]; then DEPRECATED_CRYPT=0 IFS=: read cryptdev cryptname cryptoptions &2 ;; esac done set +f IFS="$OLDIFS" unset OLDIFS if resolved=$(resolve_device "${cryptdev}" ${rootdelay}); then if cryptsetup isLuks ${resolved} >/dev/null 2>&1; then [ ${DEPRECATED_CRYPT} -eq 1 ] && warn_deprecated dopassphrase=1 # If keyfile exists, try to use that if [ -f ${ckeyfile} ]; then if eval cryptsetup --key-file ${ckeyfile} open --type luks ${resolved} ${cryptname} ${cryptargs} ${CSQUIET}; then dopassphrase=0 else echo "Invalid keyfile. Reverting to passphrase." fi fi # Ask for a passphrase if [ ${dopassphrase} -gt 0 ]; then echo "" echo "A password is required to access the ${cryptname} volume:" #loop until we get a real password while ! eval systemd-ask-password | cryptsetup open --type luks ${resolved} ${cryptname} ${cryptargs} ${CSQUIET}; do sleep 2; done fi if [ -e "/dev/mapper/${cryptname}" ]; then if [ ${DEPRECATED_CRYPT} -eq 1 ]; then export root="/dev/mapper/root" fi else err "Password succeeded, but ${cryptname} creation failed, aborting..." return 1 fi elif [ -n "${crypto}" ]; then [ ${DEPRECATED_CRYPT} -eq 1 ] && warn_deprecated msg "Non-LUKS encrypted device found..." if echo "$crypto" | awk -F: '{ exit(NF == 5) }'; then err "Verify parameter format: crypto=hash:cipher:keysize:offset:skip" err "Non-LUKS decryption not attempted..." return 1 fi exe="cryptsetup open --type plain $resolved $cryptname $cryptargs" IFS=: read c_hash c_cipher c_keysize c_offset c_skip ' for # help on a given hook. # 'base' is _required_ unless you know precisely what you are doing. # 'udev' is _required_ in order to automatically load modules # 'filesystems' is _required_ unless you specify your fs modules in MODULES # Examples: ## This setup specifies all modules in the MODULES setting above. ## No raid, lvm2, or encrypted root is needed. # HOOKS=(base) # ## This setup will autodetect all modules for your system and should ## work as a sane default # HOOKS=(base udev autodetect block filesystems) # ## This setup will generate a 'full' image which supports most systems. ## No autodetection is done. # HOOKS=(base udev block filesystems) # ## This setup assembles a pata mdadm array with an encrypted root FS. ## Note: See 'mkinitcpio -H mdadm' for more information on raid devices. # HOOKS=(base udev block mdadm encrypt filesystems) # ## This setup loads an lvm2 volume group on a usb device. # HOOKS=(base udev block lvm2 filesystems) # ## NOTE: If you have /usr on a separate partition, you MUST include the # usr, fsck and shutdown hooks. HOOKS=(base udev autodetect keyboard keymap consolefont modconf block encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck) # COMPRESSION # Use this to compress the initramfs image. By default, zstd compression # is used. Use 'cat' to create an uncompressed image. #COMPRESSION="zstd" #COMPRESSION="gzip" #COMPRESSION="bzip2" #COMPRESSION="lzma" #COMPRESSION="xz" #COMPRESSION="lzop" #COMPRESSION="lz4" # COMPRESSION_OPTIONS # Additional options for the compressor #COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=()