Alpine Linux fails to boot from an Ext2 formatted partition (REGRESSION - version 3.8+)

I had Alpine Linux 3.7.3 installed in diskless/data mode within an Ext2 formatted boot partition. I was using GRUB bootloader to load the Alpine kernel & initrd with 'modloop=' kernel parameter and everything worked great. I then decided to upgrade it to the newer versions and found that the system would no longer boot and throw the following error: "initramfs emergency recovery shell launched. Type 'exit' to continue boot"

Upon further investigation, I determined that the failure is caused by nlplug-findfs: somehow it can't mount the Ext2 partition anymore and throws a "No such device" error. There's nothing wrong otherwise with the Ext2 partition (checked with fsck) and the older Alpine versions up to 3.7.3 had no issues booting from this partition.

nlplug-findfs: searchdev: dev='/dev/sda' type='(null)' label='(null)' uuid='(null)'
nlplug-findfs: [3375] spawned (1 running): /sbin/mdev: ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/sda1 SUBSYSTEM=block MAJOR=8 MINOR=1 DEVNAME=sda1 DEVTYPE=partition PARTN=1 SEQNUM=3025
nlplug-findfs: [3375] reaped (0 running): /sbin/mdev: ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/sda1 SUBSYSTEM=block MAJOR=8 MINOR=1 DEVNAME=sda1 DEVTYPE=partition PARTN=1 SEQNUM=3025
nlplug-findfs: searchdev: dev='/dev/sda1' type='ext2' label='BOOT' uuid='daa3cca6-8c31-4f16-aafe-ba7a9acdc307'
nlplug-findfs: mounting /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 (ext2)
nlplug-findfs: Failed to mount /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1: No such device

I then decided to try reformatting this partition as Ext3/Ext4/vfat and was successfully able to boot latest Alpine without any issues.

nlplug-findfs: searchdev: dev='/dev/sda' type='(null)' label='(null)' uuid='(null)'
nlplug-findfs: [3375] spawned (1 running): /sbin/mdev: ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/sda1 SUBSYSTEM=block MAJOR=8 MINOR=1 DEVNAME=sda1 DEVTYPE=partition PARTN=1 SEQNUM=3025
nlplug-findfs: [3375] reaped (0 running): /sbin/mdev: ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/sda1 SUBSYSTEM=block MAJOR=8 MINOR=1 DEVNAME=sda1 DEVTYPE=partition PARTN=1 SEQNUM=3025
nlplug-findfs: searchdev: dev='/dev/sda1' type='ext4' label='BOOT' uuid='8985166c-0634-405c-a716-126867d493ce'
nlplug-findfs: mounting /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 (ext4)
[   10.098243] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
nlplug-findfs: added boot repository /media/sda1/alpine to /tmp/repositories
nlplug-findfs: Setting timeout to 250

Please note that this regression defect was introduced by the Alpine 3.8 release changes. The last version that successfully boots from an Ext2 partition was 3.7.3.