Issue

This problem shows up for either 'virsh console' for a default install of a rhel6.1 guest on a rhel6.1 host or a RHEL 6 guest on a VMware ESX server (This case started before 6.1 came out, the issue remains from 6.0 through 6.1(

What happens is that one can type 'root' but as soon as you hit any character for the password, it is an instant-carriage return, so you never manage to enter the password and cannot login to the console.

Using either of these:

[root@rhel6 ~]# cat /proc/cmdline 
ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc console=tty0 KEYTABLE=us  console=ttyS0,115200

or

[root@rhel6 ~]# cat /proc/cmdline 
ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us  console=tty0 selinux=0 console=ttyS0,115200

or accessing the virtual machine through VMware's management console.

Causes a situation in virsh console where the console doesn't respond correctly to the keyboard:

[root@rhel6 ~]# virsh console rhel6
Connected to domain rhel6
Escape character is ^]
Password: 

Login incorrect

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.1 (Santiago)
Kernel 2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64 on an x86_64

rhel6.virt.example.com login: root
Password: 
Login incorrect

login: 

virsh console works when there is no option between the two console= arguments like

[root@rhel6 ~]# cat /proc/cmdline 
ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us  console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200

There is also no problem when plymouth is disabled with rd_NO_PLYMOUTH:

[root@rhel6 ~]# cat /proc/cmdline 
ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us  rd_NO_PLYMOUTH console=tty0 selinux=0 console=ttyS0,115200