Debian 14 cloud VM image boot failure

[jaens]

Summary

Launching a VM from images:debian/14/cloud through Incus boots into initramfs emergency mode and cannot proceed.

Other Debian versions (11, 12, 13) work properly.

Environment

• Incus client/server: 6.0.5
• Host OS: Debian GNU/Linux
• Host kernel: 6.18.9+deb14-amd64
• Image alias: images:debian/14/cloud
• VM image fingerprint: e61f282bc16f8bb7fffaf10e5d1b8a37e6a6a7cbe6c877050e3d76de71602d9b
• Image serial: 20260217_05:24

Reproduction

incus launch images:debian/14/cloud deb14cloud-bug --vm

incus console deb14cloud-bug --type=console --show-log

Expected behavior

The VM should boot to normal userspace and become usable.

Actual behavior

Boot fails in initramfs with sysroot mount failure, drops to emergency mode.

Full console log

BdsDxe: loading Boot0001 "UEFI QEMU QEMU HARDDISK " from PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi(0x0,0x1)
BdsDxe: starting Boot0001 "UEFI QEMU QEMU HARDDISK " from PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi(0x0,0x1)
  Booting `Debian GNU/Linux'

Loading Linux 6.18.9+deb14-amd64 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...
[FAILED] Failed to mount sysroot.mount - /sysroot.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for initrd-root-fs.target - Initrd Root File System.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for initrd-parse…points Configured in the Real Root.

Generating "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt"


Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue.
Type "journalctl" to view system logs.
You might want to save "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt" to a USB stick or /boot
after mounting them and attach it to a bug report.



Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked.
See sulogin(8) man page for more details.

Press Enter to continue.

[gibmat]

Yeah, there seems to be something changed in the Debian 14 images; haven't had a chance to look into this. See also the discussion at https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/issue-with-images-debian-forky-cloud-amd64-vm-image/26137.

Also, this is better reported in the lxc/incus repo, not lxc/incus-os; I'll see if I can move the issue.

[jaens]

Ah, right 🤦 I searched for "Incus bug reports" and through some link ended up here...

[stgraber]

Actually should go to the lxc-ci repo.

[stgraber]

Moved it now. Note that since this is a pre-release version of Debian, our testing ignores boot failures for those images and we're also not likely to spend much time on addressing this, mostly waiting to see if whatever changed in Debian goes away on its own before spending more time on it :)

[lnussbaum]

As not so useful data points:

• I started with debian/13 and dist-upgraded to forky. The VM still boots fine.
• then I manually installed dracut. The VM still boots fine.