Thanks for all your suggestions. I have been experimenting with the various approaches with little success. Passing the boot parameter console=tty (or console=tty1) as RB suggested does not help. By the way, I am using a vanilla kernel straight from kernel.org. Prior to that, I was using an ubuntu-sources kernel but having had the same problem I thought that maybe the issue was due to some ubuntu specific patch to the kernel. grep CONSOLE .config outputs # CONFIG_NETCONSOLE is not set CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_HW_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_VT_HW_CONSOLE_BINDING=y CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_SERIAL_CORE_CONSOLE=y # CONFIG_LP_CONSOLE is not set CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y grep _FB_ .config doesn't output anything as I do not have any Frame Buffer support enabled. Setting USEPIVOT=0 as per Markus' suggestion and rebuilding the initrd image results in a kernel panic after reboot with the following grub configuration (taken from the build-initrd.sh comments) title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.22.1vanila Encrypted No Pivot root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22.1vanila ro root=101 console=tty initrd /initrd-crypt.gz (initrd-crypt.gz is the correct initrd image. I have set INITRDGZNAME=initrd-crypt.gz) The kernel panic seemed due to the initrd image not being able to mount root - i.e. last messages printed to the console are: List of All Partitions: 0300 78150744 hda driver ide-disk 0301 64228 hda1 0302 76172197 hda2 0303 1911735 hda3 No filesystems can mount root tried ext2 ext3 minix Kernel panic - not syncing VFS: unable to mount rootfs on unknow-block(1,1) hda1 is boot initialised as ext2, hda2 is root initialised as ext3. I find this kind of strange as I have the chipset drivers compiled in and ext2 and ext3 compiled in the kernel as well. I can see the kernel detecting the hds correctly before panicking. Regards, Jivko markus reichelt wrote: > * Jari Ruusu <jariruusu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > >> Either your kernel does not run initrd code, or initrd is somehow >> messed up and is unrunnable. Can you send me your full compressed >> kernel config, and a copy of your initrd.gz file? >> > > When I was setting up root encryption on some machines with different > kernel versions I ran into problems with pivot mode. On some it > worked, on most it didn't, so I'm not using it for new setups these > days. I remembered there was some talk on LKML about it, here's the > link: > > http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/06/24/130 > > Jivko, have you tried using an initrd with USEPIVOT=0? Don't forget > to adapt kernel boot parameters. > > - Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/