Segfault in OpenVINOExecutionProvider with NPU on PVE kernel 6.17.9 (libopenvino.so.2541)

[eckmannmiles91]

Description

onnxruntime-openvino 1.24.1 segfaults immediately when creating an InferenceSession with OpenVINOExecutionProvider on an Intel Arrow Lake system with NPU. The crash occurs in the bundled libopenvino.so.2541 (OpenVINO 2025.4.1) at a fixed offset during NPU plugin initialization.

CPUExecutionProvider works fine with the same model files and environment.

Environment

• onnxruntime-openvino: 1.24.1 (latest on PyPI)
• Bundled OpenVINO: 2025.4.1 (libopenvino.so.2541)
• Python: 3.12
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (LXC container on Proxmox VE 9.1.5)
• Kernel: 6.17.9-1-pve (Proxmox, host kernel)
• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 265 (Arrow Lake)
• NPU device: /dev/accel0 passed through to LXC
• Kernel module: intel_vpu 1.0.0 (built into PVE kernel 6.17.9)
• NPU userspace: intel-level-zero-npu 1.32.0, intel-fw-npu 1.32.0, intel-driver-compiler-npu 1.32.0
• Also tested with: intel-level-zero-npu 1.28.0 — same segfault
• Standalone openvino 2026.1.0: installed alongside ORT — no effect (ORT loads its bundled libs)

Reproduction

import onnxruntime as ort

# This segfaults:
sess = ort.InferenceSession(
    "encoder_model.onnx",
    providers=["OpenVINOExecutionProvider"]
)

# This works:
sess = ort.InferenceSession(
    "encoder_model.onnx",
    providers=["CPUExecutionProvider"]
)

The model is Moonshine Base encoder (~78MB ONNX). Any ONNX model triggers the crash — it happens during EP initialization, not model loading.

Crash Details

signal=SEGV (status=11)
segfault at 0 ip <offset 0xcdd56c> in libopenvino.so.2541
error 6 (write to NULL pointer in userspace)

• Crash is 100% reproducible, always at the same offset in libopenvino.so.2541
• dmesg on host confirms: python3[PID]: segfault at 0 ip ...cdd56c in libopenvino.so.2541

What We've Tried

1. ✅ Upgraded NPU userspace from 1.28.0 → 1.32.0 (latest from intel/linux-npu-driver) — still segfaults
2. ✅ Installed standalone openvino==2026.1.0 in the venv — ORT still loads its bundled libopenvino.so.2541, segfault persists
3. ✅ Confirmed /dev/accel0 exists and intel_vpu module is loaded
4. ✅ ldd shows no missing libraries
5. ✅ CPUExecutionProvider works perfectly as a workaround

Expected Behavior

OpenVINOExecutionProvider should either:

1. Successfully initialize and use the NPU, or
2. Fail gracefully with an error message instead of segfaulting

Request

• Is there a known incompatibility between ORT-OpenVINO 1.24.1's bundled OpenVINO 2025.4.1 and the intel_vpu driver in kernel 6.17.x?
• Will the next onnxruntime-openvino release bundle a newer OpenVINO (2026.x) that may resolve this?
• Is there a way to force ORT to use a system-installed OpenVINO instead of its bundled libopenvino.so.2541?

Workaround

Using CPUExecutionProvider — encoder inference is 88ms on CPU vs ~50ms on NPU. Acceptable but we'd prefer NPU when available.