Black screen AMD EPYC 9454P

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

Operating System: AlmaLinux 8/9, RHEL 9
Virtualization Platform: VirtualBox
Host Processor: AMD EPYC 9454P
Guest OS: AlmaLinux 8
Issue Description:

The guest OS displays a black screen when attempting to boot AlmaLinux 8/9 and RHEL 9 on a VirtualBox VM running on an AMD EPYC 9454P host. No graphical output or login prompt is visible.
Steps to Reproduce:
Create a new AlmaLinux 8 virtual machine in VirtualBox.
Configure the VM's hardware settings, assigning an appropriate amount of RAM and CPU cores.
Attach a virtual hard disk image containing the AlmaLinux 8 installation media.
Start the VM
. Observe that the VM boots to a black screen.

Expected Behavior:
The VM should display the AlmaLinux 8 boot splash screen and eventually present the login prompt
.
Additional Information:
The issue has been observed on AlmaLinux 8 and RHEL 9 guest OSes.
The issue persists even after updating VirtualBox 7.0, and 7.1 Beta 2

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

Sorry
Host OS: AlmaLinux 8

[multiOS2019]

The "installation media" should be an iso file. You insert it in the VM's Virtual CD/DVD Drive (NOT on a Virtual Hard Drive) and then boot the VM to install the Operating System, same as you would with a CD/DVD installer on a real computer.

The process is described in the VirtualBox User Manual (Section 2.8.1 Page 14)

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

The ISOs are from official sources.
eg:
rhel-9.4-x86_64-dvd.iso

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

RHEL 9.4. Log

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

Tried in Arch Linux also.

got one kernel message in both Alma and Arch.

Alma

Sep 30 09:51:52 localhost vboxdrv.sh[7167]: VirtualBox services started.

Sep 30 10:01:58 localhost kernel: vboxdrv: 0000000000000000 VMMR0.r0

Sep 30 10:01:58 localhost kernel: vboxdrv: 0000000000000000 VBoxDDR0.r0

Arch

Oct 01 09:26:38 [kernel] [ 149.393293] vboxdrv: 0000000005ef997c VMMR0.r0

Oct 01 09:26:38 [kernel] [ 149.519598] vboxdrv: 00000000586379a7 VBoxDDR0.r0

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

The processor is AMD EPYC 9454P 48-Core Processor

If i do cat /sys/module/kvm_amd/parameters/nested the output is 1

but

VMs hang with the Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V

and

Enable Nested Paging

settings

Is is something to do with VirtualBox detecting the wrong CPU ?

00:00:00.703071 CPUM: Matched host CPU AMD 0x19/0x11/0x1 AMD_Unknown with CPU DB entry 'AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Eight-Core' (AMD 0x17/0x1/0x1 AMD_Zen_Ryzen)

in VBox.log

as my issue is different should I open a new defect ?

[Thomas Stephen Lee]

I have tested this in
Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
Alma Linux 8
Alma Linux 9
Arch Linux