qemu-system-arm is missing dependency seabios

[Giuseppe Petralia]

qemu-system-arm is missing seabios as dependency. As a result if you install charm nova-compute on arm64 machines and try to create a VM on the arm64 hypervisor, VM creation will fail with:

2023-09-01 13:12:00.329 189585 ERROR nova.virt.libvirt.driver [req-3dadac8a-cd7b-42fb-a0ff-5571765cded0 de6ee71f5247471a96ee54c7be4c7a0a d53aa7ee73474b9eb7de53b8019b8333 - default default] [instance: ff8d2ca2-5d17-423a-9e42-4bf375f943de] Failed to start libvirt guest: libvirt.libvirtError: internal error: qemu unexpectedly closed the monitor: 2023-09-01T13:11:59.759452Z qemu-system-aarch64: -device virtio-vga,id=video0,max_outputs=1,bus=pci.7,addr=0x0: failed to find romfile "vgabios-virtio.bin"

Workaround is to install manually the dependency with:

apt install seabios

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

This is ... unexpected.

I set up an arm64 machine and ran a normal (read no special config in any way) guest via libvirt/qemu/kvm

It works fine and seabios is not installed at this moment.
Guest config looks like:

<domain type='kvm'>
  <name>jammy-cpaelzer</name>
  <uuid>7dcae1b1-3caa-462c-b91d-b6af643a9dbc</uuid>
  <metadata>
  <memory unit='KiB'>524288</memory>
  <currentMemory unit='KiB'>524288</currentMemory>
  <vcpu placement='static'>1</vcpu>
  <os>
    <type arch='aarch64' machine='virt-6.2'>hvm</type>
    <loader readonly='yes' type='pflash'>/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd</loader>
    <nvram template='/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd'>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/jammy-cpaelzer_VARS.fd</nvram>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
  </os>
  <features>
    <acpi/>
    <apic/>
    <pae/>
    <gic version='3'/>
  </features>
  <cpu mode='host-passthrough' check='none'/>
  <clock offset='utc'/>
  <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff>
  <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot>
  <on_crash>destroy</on_crash>
  <devices>
    <emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-system-aarch64</emulator>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/>
      <source file='/var/lib/uvtool/libvirt/images/jammy-cpaelzer.qcow'/>
      <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x03' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/>
      <source file='/var/lib/uvtool/libvirt/images/jammy-cpaelzer-ds.qcow'/>
      <target dev='vdb' bus='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>
    <controller type='pci' index='0' model='pcie-root'/>
    <controller type='pci' index='1' model='pcie-root-port'>
      <model name='pcie-root-port'/>
      <target chassis='1' port='0x8'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x0' multifunction='on'/>
    </controller>
    <controller type='pci' index='2' model='pcie-root-port'>
      <model name='pcie-root-port'/>
      <target chassis='2' port='0x9'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x1'/>
    </controller>
    <controller type='pci' index='3' model='pcie-root-port'>
      <model name='pcie-root-port'/>
      <target chassis='3' port='0xa'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x2'/>
    </controller>
    <controller type='pci' index='4' model='pcie-root-port'>
      <model name='pcie-root-port'/>
      <target chassis='4' port='0xb'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x3'/>
    </controller>
    <controller type='pci' index='5' model='pcie-root-port'>
      <model name='pcie-root-port'/>
      <target chassis='5' port='0xc'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x4'/>
    </controller>
    <controller type='virtio-serial' index='0'>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </controller>
    <interface type='network'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:d9:1b:cc'/>
      <source network='default'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='...

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thanks Christian, I was wondering if this might be a trivial fix but it sounds not so.

[Michael Tokarev (mjt+launchpad-tls)]

This particular case comes from enabling the vgabios-virtio.bin rom in virtio-vga unconditionally, without considering current architecture (the rom only works on x86). virtio-vga device should either omit the rom if !x86, or.. just don't care like it currently does :)

I'm evaluating what to do with this one. Adding the dep does not look right, - this is the first such request in the history. It might be added to Recommends: or even better to Suggests:. But I'd love to omit rom loading when it makes no sense. Let's see...

See also https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2024-01/msg06515.html