I have a perfectly functioning gentoo-sources kernel using the same exact setup, it loads fine, strangely, debian-sources kernel with default settings It seems to fail to mount the zpool, and I end up stuck in an ash shell. "block device is not a valid root device" "could not find the root block device"

Steps to reproduce:

1. emerge -av1 debian-sources
2. eselect kernel set 2 ([2]   linux-debian-sources-4.14.12 *)
3. emerge spl zfs-kmod zfs nvidia-drivers
4. dracut --kver '4.14.12-2' --kmoddir '/lib/modules/4.14.12-2' --fwdir '/lib/firmware/' --kernel-image '/boot/kernel-debian-sources-x86_64-4.14.12-2' --force

5. # cat /etc/default/grub|grep zfs
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="verbose root=zfs"

1. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
2. reboot

Follow these same exact steps above works perfectly with my gentoo-sources kernel, so I know I have a working configuration. Why does it not also work for debian-sources with default kernel options?

Thanks