Oracle Linux 8.10 on M1 works, but...

[plexilcrf]

My project is stuck on Oracle Linux 8 and x86. I recently switched to an M1 Max MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma 14.7.5, and have been experimenting with various container platforms.

I've tried a couple of different Linux distros as a container host under Lima (Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS, Fedora 42), but they all give indications that there's a kernel mismatch with the ancient Oracle Linux 8 4.x kernel. (E.g. under Ubuntu the man command triggers a Rosetta segfault!) I hadn't encountered these issues with OL8 containers under podman.

Yesterday I tested an Oracle Linux 8.10 VM under Lima 1.0.7 with the intent of using it as a Docker runtime. Despite the warnings that the M1 wouldn't run OL8, it started right up, and the OS seems to run more or less normally. However, in Oracle's infinite wisdom, the OL8 "cloud" image for aarch64 doesn't include the kernel module which implements virtiofs. So the mounts of /mnt/lima-rosetta, ~, and /tmp/lima don't take effect.

To attempt to fix this, I installed the kernel-uek-modules package. It also installed a new kernel (and linux-firmware, which is unnecessary and unwanted). The problem is, when I boot the VM, it boots the original kernel, so the new kernel modules aren't used. Worse, there is no kernel-uek-modules package available for the original kernel.

Is there a way to get Lima to boot from the updated kernel?

[plexilcrf]

I'll add that Oracle Linux 8 (and 9) can be EFI booted on aarch64. I don't have access to x86_64 hardware to test, but Oracle claims the same is true for that architecture.

[afbjorklund]

You can use reverse-sshfs instead of virtiofs (since EL doesn't include support for 9p), as long as Oracle includes support for FUSE.

My project is stuck on Oracle Linux 8 and x86.

Condolences. Maybe it needs an older server?

[AkihiroSuda]

Duplicate of:

• Mount directory does not show host files for template OL8 #3438

Fixed in the master branch (v1.1 pre)

• oraclelinux: fix virtiofs support #3441