Created attachment 1917577 [details]
Boot failure

Description of problem:

• RHEL9 Image Builder produces images that fails to boot when the target is VMware. Specifically the kernel boots, but you get [FAILED] Failed to mount /sysroot after a number of sense key errors. Screenshot 'bootfail.png' attached for reference.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

How reproducible:

• Always reproducible.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Build a vanilla RHEL9 VM on VMware ESX 7.0.3 19482537 using the RHEL9 Minimal Boot CD
a. Choose server with GUI
b. Register and license with Red Hat and ensure up to date

2. Follow the instructions https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/pdf/composing_a_customized_rhel_system_image/red_hat_enterprise_linux-9-composing_a_customized_rhel_system_image-en-us.pdf
a. Add your user to the weldr group
b. Yum install osbuild-composer composer-cli cockpit-composer bash-completion
c. systemctl enable --now osbuild-composer.socket
d. systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
e. Create a simple blueprint

name = “RHEL9base2”
description = “”
modules = []
groups = []
distro = “”

[[packages]]
name = “bash”
version = “*”

f. Push and start the blueprint
i. composer-cli blueprints push RHEL9base2.toml
ii. composer-cli compose start RHEL9base2

g. Image claims to have completed successfully (although log files has a lot of detail including some)

h. Upload resulting VMDK to VMware

i. Build a new VM, but delete the disk and replace with the VMDK (being sure to select IDE 0 – see page 53 and 54 in the above doc for details)

j. VM boots' but fails as above

Actual results:
--------------
The VM fails to boot.

Expected results:
------------------
The VM should boot properly.

Additional info:
-----------------

• Fdisk shows me the following

Disk /dev/sdb: 2.69 GiB, 2884632576 bytes, 5634048 sectors
Disk model: VMware Virtual I
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier:

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot
/dev/sdb2 4096 413695 409600 200M EFI System
/dev/sdb3 413696 1437695 1024000 500M Linux extended boot
/dev/sdb4 1437696 5634014 4196319 2G Linux filesystem

but the /dev/sdb4 can not even be mounted

[root@rhel9 ~]# mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt/otherroot/
mount: /mnt/otherroot: can't read superblock on /dev/sdb4.

• The issue occurs with the Images created from console.redhat.com as well.

• Same issue also occurs with RHEL 8.