efifb on Linux guest fails to load when using VGA passthrough

[Nicholas Vinson]

The EFI framebuffer fails to load when booting a Gentoo guest using ovmf + vga_passthrough. I retested using they system rescue CD and saw the same issue, but also noticed that when a second framebuffer loads, nouveaufb in my case, the terminal appears. I have also verified that the Gentoo min CD is not hanging at boot as I can type 'poweroff' after waiting a few minutes and the system responds by powering off. I am unable to reproduce with seabios as I have been unable to get vga passthrough to work with that BIOS.

Steps to Reproduce:
    1. Install qemu and ovmf
    2. Download systemrescuecd-x86-5.3.1.iso
    3. Run qemu using one of the configurations below
    4. Select first boot option in GRUB menu
    5. Wait 30 seconds
    6. Press enter # System rescue is prompting for the keymap between steps 5 and 6
    7. Wait 2 minutes
    8. Observe fb console
    9. Note lack of output until very late in boot process
   10. Check dmesg
   11. Note efifb failed to load (invalid address)
   12. Note nouveaufb started late in boot process

Expected Results:
   The EFI FB to load and display output to monitor. This is the behavior I see when booting the host system via UEFI.

Actual Results:
   The EFI FB fails to load and display output. System fails to display any output until nouveaufb loads. When booting using the Gentoo minCD, this makes the system largely unusable.

Additional information:

Tested using Gentoo's app-emulation/qemu-3.0.0 version. Bug report: https://bugs.gentoo.org/669880

I also tested qemu at git commit 179f9ac887973c818b2578bd79fa3ed2522657d4. Configuration log for the build will be attached.

[Nicholas Vinson (nvinson)]

The OVMF BIOS used can be downloaded from https://dev.gentoo.org/~tamiko/distfiles/edk2-ovmf-2017_p20180211-bin.tar.xz

System information via 'emerge --info' is also provided below.

Portage 2.3.51 (python 3.6.6-final-0, default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop, gcc-8.2.0, glibc-2.27-r6, 4.19.0-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
                         System Settings
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-4.19.0-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i7-4771_CPU_@_3.50GHz-with-gentoo-2.6
KiB Mem: 32634140 total, 6226108 free
KiB Swap: 2097148 total, 2097148 free
Timestamp of repository gentoo: Sun, 28 Oct 2018 09:44:31 +0000
Head commit of repository gentoo: aea18fb934c3bf31707dd73cde11f46aca67da49

Timestamp of repository brother-overlay: Sat, 27 Oct 2018 19:24:00 +0000
Head commit of repository brother-overlay: 6a39a7856547c13d12f40585721b65af7f1f6469

Head commit of repository nuntoo: b7b28a262ea47f1e8d92e36ed1a59bac2f338095

sh bash 4.4_p23
ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.31.1 p3) 2.31.1
app-shells/bash: 4.4_p23::gentoo
dev-java/java-config: 2.2.0-r4::gentoo
dev-lang/perl: 5.26.2::gentoo
dev-lang/python: 2.7.15::gentoo, 3.6.6::gentoo
dev-util/cmake: 3.12.3::gentoo
dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.29.2::gentoo
sys-apps/baselayout: 2.6-r1::gentoo
sys-apps/openrc: 0.39.1::gentoo
sys-apps/sandbox: 2.13::gentoo
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13::gentoo, 2.69-r4::gentoo
sys-devel/automake: 1.11.6-r3::gentoo, 1.16.1-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils: 2.31.1-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc: 8.2.0-r4::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc-config: 2.0::gentoo
sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.6-r5::gentoo
sys-devel/make: 4.2.1-r4::gentoo
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 4.19::gentoo (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc: 2.27-r6::gentoo
Repositories:

gentoo
    location: /var/db/repos/gentoo
    sync-type: git
    sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/gentoo.git
    priority: -1000

brother-overlay
    location: /var/db/repos/brother-overlay
    sync-type: git
    sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/brother-overlay.git
    masters: gentoo

nuntoo
    location: /var/db/repos/nuntoo
    sync-type: git
    sync-uri: https://github.com/nvinson/nuntoo.git
    masters: gentoo

private
    location: /var/db/repos/private
    masters: gentoo

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/sofficerc /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/var/cache/portage/distfiles"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs=8 --load-average=8"
ENV_UNSET="DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY PERL5LIB PERL5OPT PERLPREFIX PERL_CORE PERL_MB_OPT PERL_MM_OPT XAUTHORITY XDG_CACHE_HOME XDG_CONFIG_HOME XD...

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

The QEMU project is currently considering to move its bug tracking to another system. For this we need to know which bugs are still valid and which could be closed already. Thus we are setting older bugs to "Incomplete" now.
If you still think this bug report here is valid, then please switch the state back to "New" within the next 60 days, otherwise this report will be marked as "Expired". Or mark it as "Fix Released" if the problem has been solved with a newer version of QEMU already. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for QEMU because there has been no activity for 60 days.]