Grafana SIGILL illegal instruction on Rock Pi 4 (ARM64) — works with v11.0.6 but fails with 11.6.x and 12.x

Grafana Installation
1

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a repeatable crash when running Grafana on my Rock Pi 4 (ARM64), starting from Grafana v11.6.x and continuing into v12.x.
The error is a SIGILL: illegal instruction that happens immediately when starting grafana-server (even with -v).

My setup

  • Board: Rock Pi 4B
  • CPU: Rockchip RK3399 (ARM Cortex-A72 x2 + Cortex-A53 x4, ARMv8-A 64-bit)
  • Architecture: ARM64 (aarch64)
  • RAM: 4 GB
  • OS: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (Buster) minimal, kernel 4.4.154-rk3399
  • systemd: 241
  • Installed via .deb package from Grafana’s official download site (arm64 builds, not amd64)

Steps I performed and versions tested

  1. Installed v12.1.0 (grafana_12.1.0_arm64.deb)
  • Service fails to start.
  • systemctl status shows multiple warnings like:
Unknown lvalue 'ProtectClock' in section 'Service', ignoring
...
  • Running /usr/sbin/grafana-server -v crashes immediately with:
SIGILL: illegal instruction
PC=0xac26050 m=0 sigcode=1

Stack trace points to github.com/tetratelabs/wazero/internal/platform/cpuid_arm64.
2. Tested v11.6.4 (grafana_11.6.4_arm64.deb)

  • Exact same SIGILL crash as v12.x.
  1. Installed v11.0.6+security~01 (grafana_11.0.6+security~01_arm64.deb)
  • Works perfectly. Service starts normally, no crash.
  1. Prevented upgrades
  • Since apt-get upgrade tries to replace it with v12.x, I ran:
sudo apt-mark hold grafana
  • Now the package stays pinned to v11.0.6 and runs without issues.

Crash output example

Here’s the start of the crash log when running any version >=11.6.x:

SIGILL: illegal instruction
PC=0xac26050 m=0 sigcode=1
instruction bytes: 0x0 0x6 0x38 0xd5 ...
github.com/tetratelabs/wazero/internal/platform.getisar0()
    github.com/tetratelabs/wazero@v1.8.2/internal/platform/cpuid_arm64.s:11

Hypothesis

It seems that recent Grafana versions include Wazero (a WebAssembly runtime in Go) which uses certain ARM64 CPU instructions.
My Rockchip RK3399 CPU might not support some of these instructions, causing SIGILL.
This would explain why older v11.0.6 works but 11.6.x and 12.x crash immediately.

Question

  • Is this a known compatibility issue with certain ARM64 CPUs (like RK3399)?
  • Is there a way to build Grafana >=11.6.x for ARM64 without the incompatible Wazero instructions?
  • Should I expect a fix, or should I stick to v11.0.6 for this hardware?

Thanks in advance for any help or confirmation!