bug#39713:
I reinstalled the system with encrypted root and without a separate /boot partition and it boots successfully! Thank you Tobias.
bug#39713:
Thank You for the reply, Tobias. Will try setting up and report back in a few hours. I figured any distro would require a separate /boot partition with an encrypted root since debian does. I guess not.
bug#39713: reply to the original report
It seems cryptsetup is never invoked and the root partition is not decrypted before GRUB could load the kernel.