bug: vm-driver BYOC does not build the container properly causing VM process to exit with 0

[bornav]

Agent Diagnostic

Description

VM does not start exits with status 0

expected is that BYOC behaves same as prepublished image

Reproduction Steps

run local openshell-gateway with driver type vm
add gateway

run openshell sandbox create --from $HOME/git/openshell/bring-your-own-container --name pi -- python

fails with ProcessExited: VM process exited with status 0

log attached bellow

Environment

• OS: NixOS 26.11 (Zokor) x86_64
• Openshell: v0.67 / compiled from latest main

Logs

rootfs-console.log:

[    0.090496] EXT4-fs (vda): write access unavailable, skipping orphan cleanup
[0.003s] setting up writable overlay root
[    0.141515] EXT4-fs (vdc): write access unavailable, cannot proceed (try mounting with noload)
mount: /image-cache: cannot mount /dev/vdc read-only.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

Agent-First Checklist

• I pointed my agent at the repo and had it investigate this issue
• I loaded relevant skills (e.g., debug-openshell-cluster, debug-inference, openshell-cli)
• My agent could not resolve this — the diagnostic above explains why

[bornav]

2 patches required to get this working

0001-fix-vm-driver-cleanly-unmount-overlay-before-image-p.patch
0002-fix-vm-driver-attach-image-cache-disk-as-hypervisor-.patch

before:

after:

clean and run is a bash script consisting of these commands

sudo rm -r /home/user/.local/share/openshell
sudo rm -r /home/user/.local/state/openshell
sudo rm -r /home/user/.config/openshell
sudo rm -rf /home/user/.local/share/containers/storage/volumes/openshell*
sudo rm -r /home/user/.local/libexec/openshell

source ./exports.sh
mkdir -p $HOME/.local/share/openshell
sqlite3 $HOME/.local/share/openshell/db.sqlite "VACUUM;"

source ./exports.sh
mkdir -p ${OPENSHELL_LOCAL_TLS_DIR}
openshell-gateway generate-certs --output-dir ${OPENSHELL_LOCAL_TLS_DIR}  --server-san host.openshell.internal --server-san "127.0.0.1"

exec openshell-gateway \
  --bind-address 0.0.0.0 \
  --port 8085 \
  --db-url sqlite://$HOME/.local/share/openshell/db.sqlite \
  --driver vm

and source is ether path to current public binaries, or locally compiled ones with the patch applied

export PATH=/home/user/git/openshell_source/target/release:$PATH
export OPENSHELL_DRIVER_VM_BINARY=/home/user/git/openshell_source/target/release/openshell-driver-vm