2023-09-01
usual disclaimer: no one is responsible for any damage/loss by using this
First step:
On macos install brew (if not installed) and with it install qemu
brew install qemu
and
brew install wget
Download Alpine Linux aarc64 virtual iso image from https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/
Similar to standard. Slimmed down kernel. Optimized for virtual systems.)
create virtual disk image if want to install it and use, though iso image could be used without installation
Download ARM (aarch64) Virtual Machine Firmware EFI from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/aarch64/
/opt/homebrew/bin/wget https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/aarch64/aavmf-0.0.202302-r1.apk
currently file name is https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/aarch64/aavmf-0.0.202302-r1.apk
(probably firmware from other distros could be used)
Unpack it with tar xf $avmf-file-name (Alpine packages could be extracted with tar)
tar xf aavmf-0.0.202302-r1.apk
and copy QEMU_EFI.fd from usr/share/AAVMVF to current dir
cp usr/share/AAVMF/QEMU_EFI.fd .
Find linux partitions on macos with diskutil list command
in this example it is disk0s6 and added to qemu -drive paramater bellow
run qemu with (just example, parameters could be changed as desired for RAM, CPU, virtual disks ...) optionally add path qemu binary
qemu should be invoked with 'sudo' - sudo ./start-qemu-script.sh for example
if this doesn't work then with su command become root
sudo su
sample script
/opt/homebrew/bin/qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt,accel=hvf,highmem=off -cpu cortex-a57 -smp cores=4 -m 1G \
-nic user,model=virtio -device virtio-rng-pci \
-bios QEMU_EFI.fd \
-rtc base=utc,clock=host \
-drive if=virtio,id=hd0,format=raw,file=alpine-virt-3.18.3-aarch64.iso\
-drive if=virtio,id=hd1,format=raw,file=/dev/disk0s6 \
-device qemu-xhci -device usb-mouse \
-device usb-kbd \
-serial stdio \
-net user \
-device virtio-gpu-pci
Linux partition will be device /dev/vdb
it could be mounted with command:
mount /dev/vdb /mnt
also, more partitions could be specified in qemu parameters. for example another one can be added as:
-drive if=virtio,id=hd2,format=raw,file=/dev/disk0s7 \
and it will be /dev/vdc
It is possible to create VM qemu disk image when this iso is booted by creating file, for example:
qemu-img create -f raw rescue.img 1G
name and size could be different but 1GB size is quite enough to install some rescue tools on it.
How to install Alpine Linux is documented at https://docs.alpinelinux.org/user-handbook/0.1a/index.html