Booting stuck with NixOs installer ISO on vm - EFI stub: Loaded initrd from LINUX_EFI_INITRD_MEDIA_GUID device path

Incus
1 
> incus --version          
6.0.2

> uname -a
Linux nix-02 6.6.63 #1-NixOS SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Nov 22 14:38:37 UTC 2024 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Hey all, I’m having problems getting an incus VM to boot the minimal NixOs installer iso.
When the VM starts, I get the Grub menu, and selecting the first selection, all I see is:

EFI stub: Loaded initrd from LINUX_EFI_INITRD_MEDIA_GUID device path

Full output from incus start --console

BdsDxe: loading Boot0001 "UEFI QEMU QEMU CD-ROM " from PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi(0x1,0x1)
BdsDxe: starting Boot0001 "UEFI QEMU QEMU CD-ROM " from PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi(0x1,0x1)

Loading graphical boot menu...

Press 't' to use the text boot menu on this console...

So I press t and then:

EFI stub: Loaded initrd from LINUX_EFI_INITRD_MEDIA_GUID device path

The VM then hangs.

These are the steps taken:

> incus init iso --vm --empty -c limits.cpu=2 -c limits.memory=4GB -c security.secureboot=false  --profile default --profile bridgeprofile
> incus storage volume import default /home/bcotton/iso/latest-nixos-minimal-x86_64-linux.iso nixos-iso --type=iso
> incus config device add iso nixos-iso disk pool=default source=nixos-iso boot.priority=10
> incus start iso --console

I’ve tried looking at the vm log but there’s nothing interesting there.

% incus info --show-log iso
Name: iso
Status: RUNNING
Type: virtual-machine
Architecture: x86_64
PID: 2480406
Created: 2024/12/20 17:09 MST
Last Used: 2024/12/20 17:09 MST
Started: 2024/12/20 17:09 MST

Resources:
  Processes: -1
  Network usage:
    eth0:
      Type: broadcast
      State: UP
      Host interface: tap3d670a8f
      MAC address: 00:16:3e:e2:e6:94
      MTU: 1500
      Bytes received: 112.47kB
      Bytes sent: 2.01kB
      Packets received: 443
      Packets sent: 21
      IP addresses:
        inet6: fe80::216:3eff:fee2:e694/64 (link)

Log:

I’m able to boot other iso images, e.g. alpine, and netboot.xyz (which shows the same behavior when loading the NixOs image from netboot.xyz)

Any ideas would be appreciated.

2

Do you see the same thing from the VGA console?
incus console iso --type=vga

3

incus console iso --type=vga

Works fine. What do you think the problem is?

4

That your kernel boot command line isn’t configured to print output on the serial console.
You need to boot the kernel with console=tty1 console=ttyS0 to have it correctly set up the text console. Our prebuilt images always do that, but a manual installation won’t.