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After Ubuntu server boots up to terminal, I type my user name only to get a circumflex accent (a.k.a. caret) ^ and a left square bracket [ added to each letter.

Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS ubuntuserver tty1

ubuntuserver login:  ^[p^[e^[t^[e^[r^[

Password:



Login Incorrect

ubuntuserver login:  ^[a^[b^[c^[d^[e^[f^[g^[h^[i^[j^[k^[l^[m^[n^[o^[p^[q^[r^[s

^[t^[u^[v^[w^[x^[y^[z^[1^[2^[3^[4^[5^[6^[7^[8^[9^[0^[-^[=^[[^^[^[;^['^[,^[.^[/

You can see that I typed in the English alphabet, numbers, and symbols.

I read this was an escape sequence of each key typed. I also read my keyboard selection might be incorrect, but I'm not able to change the keyboard for the reason that I get the ^[ added to everything I type.

I booted to recovery mode and still get the same additive results. I read that a stuck key could be the cause, so I removed the laptop keyboard and connected an external HP keyboard with the same results. I tried a Dell keyboard with same results (both keyboards had the Super key (Windows key) present, don't actually own a keyboard without one anymore).

I was learning about keyboard sequences, such as, ctrl + S completely disables the keyboard from showing on the terminal then ctrl + Q re-actives the keyboard. Ctrl + Alt + Delete reboots the laptop every time.

I'm using an HP ProBook 6460b laptop with an i5 CPU and 4GB of memory and 400GB of storage allocated to ubuntu server. Currently I removed the keyboard and attached an HP extended keyboard to USB 2 port.

Please help me fix this behavior.

(I do have an idea while I await assistance, take another HDD and recover the last working back-up I created and see if it fixes the escape sequence issue)

UPDATE:

I removed the HDD from the laptop and installed a similar spare. When I attempted to boot from Redo BackUp flash drive I got a terminal screen right away with the following:

SYSLINUX 4.07 EDD 2013-07-25 Copyright (C) 1994-2013 H. Peter Anvin et al
boot:

And it just sits there, no keyboard input triggers it to boot further. I'm going to attempt to restore or re-flash the BIOS. If the re-flash doesn't work then I'm considering this possibly hardware failure.

I have a another similar laptop, so I took the HDD I took out of the faulty laptop and installed it to that spare and I was able to type with single letters on the terminal, like nothing ever happened.

Time to re-flash the faulty laptop and see if I can boot from the Redo BackUp flash. It could be HP's inability to boot any kind of Linux, so what I'll do is re-flash the BIOS, then restore Windows 10 partition with Acronis (the activation will fail but this is for experimental purposes) then restore the EXT4 partition with Redo BackUp and see if I get the additive escape sequence ^[ to my letters in Terminal.

UPDATE 2:

I re-flashed the BIOS, v65 was on there, I updated to v67. I restored Windows 10 with Acronis then attempted to boot up with Redo BackUp flash drive. I got the same unresponsive terminal as before, except I can press the space bar and type as many spaces as I wanted.

I decided to reset my security settings in the BIOS. The linux flash drives would boot if I restore defaults to TPM and Fingerprint Reader and press F1 to give permission to reset both in the BIOS. This is how I was able to boot from the Redo BackUp flash drive as soon as I pressed F1 to reset both securities. So I booted up in Redo and restored the entire drive, Windows 10 and Ubuntu Server 18.04. After the recovery, I rebooted.

Ubuntu server booted up and I was able to type my login without the caret and bracket. Success. But had to make sure. I used the poweroff command and waited a while after the laptop shutdown. I turned it back on and let Ubuntu server boot up. Terminal came on I typed my user name and BAM! the caret and bracket returned. I reset my TPM in the BIOS again and rebooted to the server, but the caret and bracket still remained.

I'm curious to see what others think about this. I know I haven't even let this topic breath a bit because I needed the server up and running. By the way, when I went to go look for drivers at HP's website, there was an option to download Linux drivers for this laptop. They were outdated compare to the Windows 8.1 versions.