Bug 2385692

Summary:	unable to handle EFI zboot image with "zstd" compression
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Component:	qemu	Assignee:	Fedora Virtualization Maintainers <virt-maint>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	45	CC:	berrange, cfergeau, crobinso, davide, mcascell, pbonzini, philmd, rjones, suraj.ghimire7, virt-maint
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	aarch64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:		Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	2385561

Description Richard W.M. Jones 2025-07-31 12:02:12 UTC

qemu on aarch64 is unable to boot the current Fedora Rawhide kernels because those use zboot + zstd, which is apparently not supported by qemu (even upstream, it seems).

https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/blob/4e06566dbd1b1251c2788af26a30bd148d4eb6c1/hw/core/loader.c#L889

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run qemu-sanity-check on aarch64 hardware with the Rawhide kernel installed.

Actual Results:
Fails to boot with:
all kernels:
/lib/modules/6.16.0-0.rc7.60.fc43.aarch64/vmlinuz
/boot/vmlinuz-6.16.0-0.rc7.60.fc43.aarch64
all qemus: /usr/bin/qemu-system-aarch64
/usr/bin/qemu-system-aarch64 -display none -no-user-config -nodefaults -machine virt,accel=kvm:tcg -cpu max -m 768 -no-reboot -serial file:/tmp/tmp.SSxhVnHnkx.out -kernel /lib/modules/6.16.0-0.rc7.60.fc43.aarch64/vmlinuz -initrd ../src/initrd -append console=ttyAMA0 oops=panic panic=-1
qemu-system-aarch64: Could not access KVM kernel module: No such file or directory
qemu-system-aarch64: failed to initialize kvm: No such file or directory
qemu-system-aarch64: falling back to tcg
unable to handle EFI zboot image with "zstd" compression
qemu-system-aarch64: could not load kernel '/lib/modules/6.16.0-0.rc7.60.fc43.aarch64/vmlinuz'
/builddir/build/BUILD/qemu-sanity-check-1.1.6-build/qemu-sanity-check-1.1.6/src/qemu-sanity-check: error: test /lib/modules/6.16.0-0.rc7.60.fc43.aarch64/vmlinuz on /usr/bin/qemu-system-aarch64: failed

Comment 1 Davide Cavalca 2026-01-14 15:00:36 UTC

This should be resolved by https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2025-11/msg03753.html which is queued for 11.0 (see https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2025-11/msg03759.html). Maybe we can backport it in the Fedora package in the meantime?

Comment 2 Davide Cavalca 2026-01-14 15:13:45 UTC

Uh, I don't actually see those commits on https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/commits/master?ref_type=HEADS though. Will followup with upstream and see what's up there.

Comment 3 Aoife Moloney 2026-08-17 13:57:30 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 45 development cycle.
Changing version to 45.