Working with Overlayroot

I am trying to make a simple kiosk environment using PopOS. I got everything working as I wanted it to. Using Overlayroot, the machine looses any changes on reboot. The issue I have is that when I try an disable Overlayroot to make permanent changes, I seem to loose the drive.

Please see below.

I installed overlayroot and then added "overlayroot=“tmpfs” to /etc/overlayroot.conf and rebooted.

I needed to make some system updates so tried rolling it back by commenting out overlayroot=“tmpfs” in /etc/overlayroot.conf and then running “sudo update-initramfs -u”.

When I did this however, I go the following output:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76860903-generic
cryptsetup: ERROR: Couldn't resolve device overlayroot
cryptsetup: WARNING: Couldn't determine root device
W: Couldn't identify type of root file system for fsck hook
kernelstub.Config: INFO Looking for configuration ...
kernelstub: INFO System information:
OS: Pop!_OS 22.04
Root partition: /home/sysadmin/overlayroot
Root FS UUID: ...
ESP Path: /boot/efi
ESP Partition: /dev/sda1
ESP Partition #: 1
NVRAM entry #: -1
Boot Variable #: 0000
Kernel Boot Options: quiet loglevel=0 systemd.show_status=false splash
Kernel Image Path: /boot/vmlinuz-6.9.3-76060903-generic
Initrd Image Path: /boot/initrd.img-6.9.3-76060903-generic
Force-overwrite: False
kernelstub.Installer: INFO Copying Kernel into ESP
kernelstub.Installer: INFO Copying initrd.img into ESP
kernelstub.Installer: INFO Setting up loader.conf configuration
kernelstub.Installer: INFO Making entry file for Pop!_OS
kernelstub.Installer: INFO Backing up old kernel
kernelstub.Installer: INFO No old kernel found, skipping

and then when I reboot, it boots to the following prompt:

BusyBox v1.30.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.30.1-7ubuntu3.1) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
(initramfs) _

Before I rebuild the machine again (this has happened to me twice), how do I prevent this from happening again when I try repeat the process? Is how to I go about fixing it?

By default pop_os uses encryption which is why you see that error there. I found this and it might be the nugget you are looking for.

Thanks for finding this, yes I think it is the nugget. I just need to work out how it applies with PoPOS as PopOS appears to need Cryptsetup so it can’t be removed.

The second part of the post gives direction on how to work with encryption but I will need to do some more research to bring myself up to speed but at least I know where to begin.

Thanks again.