Re: keyboard doesn't work at Boot Menu

[apologies if I'm barging in]

Just for fun I tried rebooting my 8GB Pi4 running -current
from the video console and USB keyboard (old Logitec). 
 
On reboot there was no beastie menu (maybe it was turned off)
but the loader responded to the USB keyboard to allow boot to
single user mode. The HDMI output ended with
....
Dual Console: Serial Primary, Video Secondary
and after that the keyboard became unresponsive,
although the caps lock key still toggled the light.
 
Meanwhile the serial console reported: 
Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
After hitting return, it continued 
Cannot read termcap database;
using dumb terminal settings.
Cannot read termcap database;
using dumb terminal settings.

Issuing exit to the root shell on the serial
console brought up a login prompt on the video
console and it worked as normal. 

At this point /boot/msdos/config.txt contains
[all]
arm_64bit=1
dtparam=audio=on,i2c_arm=on,spi=on
dtoverlay=mmc
dtoverlay=disable-bt
device_tree_address=0x4000
kernel=u-boot.bin

[pi4]
#hdmi_safe=1
armstub=armstub8-gic.bin
gpio=2,3=a0

which I think haven't been tampered with.

/boot/loader.conf contains
# Configure USB OTG; see usb_template(4).
hw.usb.template=3
umodem_load="YES"
# Multiple console (serial+efi gop) enabled.
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
# Disable the beastie menu and color
beastie_disable="YES"
loader_color="NO"
filemon_load="YES"
# net.inet.tcp.tolerate_missing_ts="1"
#hw.usb.debug=1
vm.pageout_oom_seq="4096"
vm.pfault_oom_attempts="120"
vm.pfault_oom_wait="20"
[likely the vm stuff is pointless]

If there's anything useful I can try please say so.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska