The "-nodefaults" parameter seems to be the key. Here is my qemu command for the VM with seabios: qemu-system-x86_64 \ -enable-kvm -s -S -smp 2 -machine type=q35 \ -drive file=opensuse-15.1.img,if=virtio \ -m 2048 \ -virtfs local,id=fsdev,path=share,security_model=passthrough,mount_tag=v_share \ -monitor stdio \ -debugcon file:debug.log -global isa-debugcon.iobase=0x402 \ -serial unix:serial,server,nowait \ -display none \ -netdev user,id=hostnet0 -device virtio-net-pci,romfile=,netdev=hostnet0 It worked fine until I appended "-nodefaults". Maybe some default device was disabled and caused the problem.