diff --git a/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux.go b/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux.go
index bca93e5a9..0a2e3be1e 100644
--- a/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux.go
+++ b/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux.go
@@ -250,10 +250,16 @@ func (l *Linux) parseCmdLine(cmdLine []string) error {
 		return fmt.Errorf("no init was specified")
 	}
 
-	// Wrap multi-word arguments in quotes for urunit
+	// Wrap multi-word arguments in quotes for urunit. Arguments that already
+	// contain a single quote cannot be safely wrapped this way, since naively
+	// concatenating quotes produces an unbalanced quote sequence that
+	// corrupts urunit's token-boundary parsing of the boot cmdline.
 	normalizedArgs := make([]string, len(cmdLine))
 	for i, arg := range cmdLine {
 		arg = strings.TrimSpace(arg)
+		if strings.Contains(arg, "'") {
+			return fmt.Errorf("argument %q contains an unsupported single quote character", arg)
+		}
 		if strings.Contains(arg, " ") {
 			normalizedArgs[i] = "'" + arg + "'"
 		} else {
diff --git a/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux_test.go b/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0db2501cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/unikontainers/unikernels/linux_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+// Copyright (c) 2023-2026, Nubificus LTD
+//
+// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+// You may obtain a copy of the License at
+//
+//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+//
+// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+// limitations under the License.
+
+package unikernels
+
+import (
+	"testing"
+
+	"github.com/stretchr/testify/assert"
+	"github.com/stretchr/testify/require"
+)
+
+func TestLinuxParseCmdLine(t *testing.T) {
+	t.Parallel()
+
+	testCases := []struct {
+		name        string
+		cmdLine     []string
+		expectedApp string
+		expectedCmd string
+		expectErr   bool
+	}{
+		{
+			name:      "empty cmdline",
+			cmdLine:   []string{},
+			expectErr: true,
+		},
+		{
+			name:        "single word app only",
+			cmdLine:     []string{"/urunit"},
+			expectedApp: "/urunit",
+			expectedCmd: "",
+		},
+		{
+			name:        "multi-word argument gets quoted",
+			cmdLine:     []string{"/urunit", "sh -c ls"},
+			expectedApp: "/urunit",
+			expectedCmd: "'sh -c ls'",
+		},
+		{
+			name:      "argument with space and single quote is rejected",
+			cmdLine:   []string{"/urunit", "sh -c \"echo it's broken\""},
+			expectErr: true,
+		},
+		{
+			name:      "argument with single quote and no space is rejected",
+			cmdLine:   []string{"/urunit", "it's"},
+			expectErr: true,
+		},
+	}
+
+	for _, tc := range testCases {
+		t.Run(tc.name, func(t *testing.T) {
+			t.Parallel()
+
+			l := &Linux{}
+			err := l.parseCmdLine(tc.cmdLine)
+
+			if tc.expectErr {
+				require.Error(t, err)
+				return
+			}
+
+			require.NoError(t, err)
+			assert.Equal(t, tc.expectedApp, l.App)
+			assert.Equal(t, tc.expectedCmd, l.Command)
+		})
+	}
+}