OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 20221219 snapshot is broken on arm64

[Technogeezer]

Just a heads-up. The latest 20221219 "snapshot" (or build) ISO of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed aarch64 will not install on Fusion 13 running on Apple Silicon. It throws errors as the installer is starting up. This appears to be a problem with the distribution, as the issue is not limited to Fusion - it appears to be a generic issue with that build and has been observed on UTM and Parallels running on Apple Silicon Macs.

Tumbleweed is a rolling distribution, and the OpenSUSE maintainers provide only the latest "snapshot" build ISO installer. The broken installer is the only one available for download. Unless you have an older Tumbleweed ISO installer handing around, you will be unable to install a brand new VM of Tumbleweed from the ISO you can download from opensuse.org.

We're awaiting a new build to see if the issues get resolved. 

As a corollary, if you have a working Tumbleweed VM, do not update it to the latest snapshot with "zypper dup". The updated distribution just happens to be the 20221219 snapshot - and it too results in a broken installation and you will need to roll it back. (thank goodness that Tumbleweed has a pretty painless method of rolling back problematic distribution updates).

[Technogeezer]

Having done some more research it looks like someone reported this to OpenSUSE through Bugzilla: Bug 1206684 – Segmentation fault with zypper-1.14.58-1.2.aarch64

The issue appears to be with a gcc library and has been reported to the upstream package maintainers.

There is a workaround : Upon booting the installer and at the grub boot prompt, hit 'e' to edit the Instalation boot menu and add

arm64.nopauth

to the kernel arguments. The 20221219 snapshot will install without issue and persist the argument into the installed systems boot arguments.

For existing installations, adding the same arguments to the boot loader (through YaST's Boot Loader module) before upgrading Tumbleweed. will allow the installation to upgrade to 20221219 successfully.

I'm leaving the workaround in place until I can verify that the issue has been fixed in a later snapshot.

libgcc_s1-13.0.0+git197351-4.1.aarch64

[Technogeezer]

Latest update short version: The workaround is no longer required as the issue has been fixed.

Longer version:

Tumbleweed snapshots 20230119 and later fix this issue. Installation ISOs downloaded after 20-Jan-2023 no longer require the workaround.

If you've incorporated the workaround into an existing installation, the arm64.nopauth boot argument can be removed using YaST's Boot Loader module once you have upgraded to snapshot 20230119 or later.