EFI stub: ERROR: FIRMWARE BUG: kernel image not aligned on 64k boundary

[Paolo Pisati]

While reviewing some dkms failures on arm64 impish/linux-oracle, i noticed this:

...
EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel...
EFI stub: EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL unavailable
EFI stub: ERROR: FIRMWARE BUG: kernel image not aligned on 64k boundary
EFI stub: ERROR: FIRMWARE BUG: Image BSS overlaps adjacent EFI memory region
EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table
EFI stub: Exiting boot services and installing virtual address map...
...

and the VM doesn't come back.

Full log here: https://autopkgtest.ubuntu.com/results/autopkgtest-impish/impish/arm64/b/backport-iwlwifi-dkms/20210921_165307_4f8e0@/log.gz

[shuhao (shuhao88)]

Is there a workaround for this problem

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Zhangzhen (joey1sher)]

Could you explain how I can do that, please? I ran into the same problem as #1, and now it is stuck here. How can I do the changes as you said?

[Fabio Augusto Miranda Martins (fabio.martins)]

I believe the "EFI stub: ERROR: FIRMWARE BUG: kernel image not aligned on 64k boundary" that was reported on this bug is not what is preventing the VM from booting. If you look into the full log you provided, that message is logged both on the boot that succeeded and in the one that got stuck.

I believe whatever was done in the VM in between these reboots, might have caused the problem you are observing.

There's also a known problem on linux-oracle kernel that prevents you from seeing the serial console. That is being fixed for Focal images on the linux-oracle 5.13.0.1023.28~20.04.1 kernel, which is currenlty in focal-proposed. If this is something you can reproduce with Focal images, using the kernel from proposed might help you see what is really preventing the VM from starting.

We'll review the 'kernel image not aligned on 64k boundary' error anyway to assess what might be causing it.