Bug 2222137

Summary:	supermin images with zboot (and systemd-boot?)
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Jeremy Linton <jeremy.linton>
Component:	supermin	Assignee:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Status:	CLOSED EOL	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	40	CC:	rjones
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	aarch64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2025-05-16 07:42:21 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jeremy Linton 2023-07-11 23:51:54 UTC

Testing supermin, it looks to be doing the right thing WRT to picking up the host kernel/initrd when running on a systemd-boot machine when those items are found in /boot/efi/$MACHINEID/$KERNELVER/kernel.

That appears to be because its actually symlinking the kernel from /lib/modules/$KERNELVER.

That said, at least on aarch64 machines, it seems the resulting example images won't boot, and it appears the problem is because qemu doesn't yet understand the ZBOOT (PE wrapped compressed kernel image) format being used in fedora when passed as a -kernel, because there isn't a direct entry point unless something decompresses the image (AKA a UEFI compliant firmware running in the guest as well).

So, this might just be a qemu bug, but per the fedora-dev mailing list, i'm going to open it here as a placeholder since I can't seem to validate a full supermin sequence at the moment.




Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a systemd-boot machine with inst.sdboot/etc.
2. Install supermin
3. Follow the examples frp, https://libguestfs.org/supermin.1.html to create an image
4. Attempt to boot image, tweaking parms for aarch64
Actual Results:  
No response from qemu when passed the supermin kernel with -kernel, which looks like it could be a problem with the -serial device, but it behaves the same when -kernel is just garbage too.


Expected Results:  
The image boots per the instructions.

Comment 1 Fedora Release Engineering 2023-08-16 08:12:40 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 39 development cycle.
Changing version to 39.

Comment 2 Aoife Moloney 2024-02-15 22:56:43 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 40 development cycle.
Changing version to 40.

Comment 3 Aoife Moloney 2025-04-25 10:06:05 UTC

This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 40 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 40 on 2025-05-13.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '40'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora Linux version. Note that the version field may be hidden.
Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see it.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 40 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.

Comment 4 Aoife Moloney 2025-05-16 07:42:21 UTC

Fedora Linux 40 entered end-of-life (EOL) status on 2025-05-13.

Fedora Linux 40 is no longer maintained, which means that it
will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we
are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora Linux
please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Note that the version
field may be hidden. Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see
the version field.

If you are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against an
active release.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.