How to enable early printk Early printk can only be enabled if debug=y. You may want to enable it if you are debbuging code that executes before the console is initialized. Note that selecting this option will limit Xen to a single UART definition. Attempting to boot Xen image on a different platform *will not work*, so this option should not be enable for Xens that are intended to be portable. CONFIG_EARLY_PRINTK=mach where mach is the name of the machine: - vexpress: printk with pl011 for versatile express By default early printk is disabled.