If you use the dmcrypt init-script to decrypt a partition at boot time, and use a passkey with unicode characters, then the console termencoding must be set to unicode before the dm-crypt init-script executes, or else the passkey won't match when entered. This is taken care of by /lib/rc/sh/init-early.sh and the /lib/rc/console/unicode flag. The problem is that /lib/rc/console/unicode is set by the consolefont init-script. If you don't use consolefont, then the console won't be set to unicode until the termencoding init-script is run, and that is after dmcrypt. Entering the passkey at boot time will fail in this scenario. Making the termencoding init-script set /lib/rc/console/unicode instead of the consolefont init-script, fixes this issue. Imho it also makes more sense to have it that way.
Created attachment 262393 [details, diff] Patch that makes init.d/termencoding set the unicode flag instead of init.d/consolefont
Committed to the repo: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/openrc.git;a=commit;h=bae0a693a9271b3ed0f723fdafc22efe5f07b70e
