A laptop that was installed using the default Ubuntu 16.10 (xenial) full-disk encryption option stopped booting after receiving a kernel update somewhere on the way to Ubuntu 17.04 (zesty).

After showing the boot screen for about 30 seconds, a busybox shell pops up:

BusyBox v.1.21.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.21.1-1ubuntu1) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)

Typing exit will display more information about the failure before bringing us back to the same busybox shell:

Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
  - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
    - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
    - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
  - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root does not exist. Dropping to a shell! 

BusyBox v.1.21.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.21.1-1ubuntu1) built-in shell (ash)   
Enter 'help' for list of built-in commands.  

(initramfs)

which now complains that the /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root root partition (which uses LUKS and LVM) cannot be found.

There is some comprehensive advice out there but it didn't quite work for me. This is how I ended up resolving the problem.

Boot using a USB installation disk

First, create bootable USB disk using the latest Ubuntu installer:

1. Download an desktop image.

2. Copy the ISO directly on the USB stick (overwriting it in the process):

    dd if=ubuntu.iso of=/dev/sdc1
   

and boot the system using that USB stick (hold the option key during boot on Apple hardware).

Mount the encrypted partition

Assuming a drive which is partitioned this way:

• /dev/sda1: EFI partition
• /dev/sda2: unencrypted boot partition
• /dev/sda3: encrypted LVM partition

Open a terminal and mount the required partitions:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda3 sda3_crypt
vgchange -ay
mount /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root /mnt
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

Note:

• When running cryptsetup luksOpen, you must use the same name as the one that is in /etc/crypttab on the root parition (sda3_crypt in this example).

• All of these partitions must be present (including /proc and /dev) for the initramfs scripts to do all of their work. If you see errors or warnings, you must resolve them.

Regenerate the initramfs on the boot partition

Then "enter" the root partition using:

chroot /mnt

and make sure that you have the necessary packages installed:

apt install lvm2 cryptsetup-initramfs

before regenerating the initramfs for all of the installed kernels:

update-initramfs -c -k all