Recent Kernel Update May Break Virtual Machines on Intel 11th Gen (or Newer) Platforms

The Kernel 5.19.3 update, which recently made available, may result in boot failures with virtual machines using BIOS/UEFI CSM boot modes. This issue has been reproduced on Qemu and VirtualBox. In some cases, it may also result in the host system freezing.

Based on our preliminary investigation, this issue is possibly resulted from the Intel IBT (Indirect Branch Tracking) feature, enabled with this Kernel update. This feature is an effort to improve platform security with newer Intel processors. The aforementioned issue has been fixed in Kernel 5.19.4 update, which we will make available in the immediate future (see Reference 3).

In the mean time, you may workaround this issue by appending the ibt=off Kernel parameter. To do so, please edit /etc/default/grub with superuser permission. For instance:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

On the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=, append ibt=off between the quotation marks. Please take care to separate this parameter with others with one or more spaces. As follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet rw rd.auto rd.auto=1 splash ibt=off"

After which, execute:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

And reboot your device to apply changes.

References:

1. User Report on the Arch Linux forum (bug report attached within).
2. Upstream Kernel bug report (virtual machine boot failure).
3. Upstream Kernel patches (1, 2）.

— Mingcong Bai