Control: tag -1 + upstream
On 17.06.2026 11:09, Bastian Blank wrote:
Package: qemu-system-x86
Version: 1:11.0.1+ds-1
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
qemu-system-x86_64 defaults to a memory size of 128 MB for as long as I
can remember. This is however not even enough to load a current Debian
shipped Linux kernel. It then fails with weird error messages, but no
clear indication what is wrong. For example with Linux:
| EFI stub: ERROR: Failed to decompress kernel
| EFI stub: ERROR: efi_stub_entry() failed!
| BdsDxe: failed to load Boot0001 "UEFI Non-Block Boot Device" from
VenMedia(1428F772-B64A-441E-B8C3-9EBDD7F893C7): Not Found
Don't you think it would be useful to raise this value somewhat, so at
least we can get more useful error indications?
Hi!
I sort of agree, yes. The main problem here, IMHO, is not the too small
memory size which qemu provides by default, but a lack of error reporting
in the kernel. As far as I remember, it's always been this way, and this
very issue has always been difficult to debug - including real HW way
before qemu.
Speaking of qemu, - for a very long time, years if not decades, every
guide out there says to specify amount of memory you want to allocate
for your guest. Maybe we can raise default RAM size for new machine
types, but I guess it will be a kind of mis-service because users will
start forgetting to specify -m again :)
And this definitely needs to be raised upstream, - this kind of default
should not be modified downstream, making debian build different from
everything else. This should be changed in a way to be migration-
compatible between different qemu versions (though I guess this is not
very important in this context since for a migratable VM you always
should specify the ram size with most accuracy, the same at both ends).
Thanks,
/mjt
