Installation fails on QEMU/KVM (UEFI) - bootupd cannot find ESP partition on virtual disk

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Original Post
October 3, 2026 1:49 AM

Hello RakuOS team,

First of all, thank you for your work on this project. I'm trying to install RakuOS inside a QEMU/KVM virtual machine (using virt-manager on Fedora 44), but the installation consistently fails at the bootloader installation step. The system keeps reporting that the ESP (EFI System Partition) cannot be found, even though the partition exists and is properly formatted.

Environment:

   Host OS: Fedora Linux 44 (Xfce)

   Virtualization: QEMU/KVM via virt-manager

   VM Firmware: UEFI (Q35 chipset)

   VM Disk: Tried both VirtIO and SATA bus

   Guest OS: RakuOS GNOME (rakuos-gnome-latest-amd64.iso) and COSMIC (rakuos-cosmic-latest-amd64.iso)

Steps to reproduce:

   Create a new VM in virt-manager with UEFI firmware (Q35).

   Boot from the RakuOS ISO and start the installer.

   Use Auto Partitioning -> Installation fails at the bootloader step.

   Alternatively, use Manual Partitioning. I created the following layout using GParted:

       /dev/vda1: 512MB, vfat, flags: boot, esp (Mount point: /boot/efi)

       /dev/vda2: 1GB, ext4 (Mount point: /boot)

       /dev/vda3: remaining space, xfs or btrfs (Mount point: /)

   In the installer, I explicitly assigned the mount points, selected the correct filesystems, and checked Format.

   Click Install Now. The installation proceeds but fails at the "Installing bootloader" step.

Actual Error Logs:

[WARN  bootupd::bootupd] Skipping device /dev/vda for EFI: ESP partition not found on /dev/vda
error: boot data installation failed: installing component EFI to device (auto): No device specified and no mounted ESP found
fatal: bootc install: bootc exited with status exit status: 1
[err] umount: /mnt/bootc-installer-target/.rakuos-installer-scratch: target is busy.

(Note: I also tried switching the virtual disk bus from VirtIO to SATA, which caused the device path to change to /dev/sda, but the exact same "ESP partition not found" error persists).

Expected behavior:
The installer should recognize the manually created ESP partition (marked with boot and esp flags) and successfully install the bootloader, allowing the VM to boot into RakuOS.

Additional context:
It seems bootc / bootupd has trouble detecting or mounting the ESP partition in a QEMU virtualized UEFI environment. This might be due to the way the installer handles mount namespaces or reads the partition table inside the VM. Any guidance on how to bypass this would be greatly appreciated.

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October 6, 2026 9:05 AM

You also need a seperate /boot partition

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