systemd-in-initramfs (as provided by dracut) is, even by recent systemd standards, an explosion of completely unnecessary complexity.

Emergency shell setup the dracut version that trixie ships generates is completely broken because systemd-sysusers fucks up /etc/shadow. This is apparently fixed in a later dracut version, but no one seems to have an answer as to why systemd-sysusers is needed in initramfs.

(Currently working on switching back to initramfs-tools while keeping LUKS TPM unlock, because this is not the first time I have had problems with systemd-flavored initramfs.)