Install Ubuntu on QEMU (ARM64)

In the description below we use QEMU invoked from the command line interface to launch an ARM 64-bit virtual machine. You could instead use a GUI based tool like Virt-Manager.

Prerequisites

To boot an ARM64 bit virtual machine you will need the following packages

The packages can be installed with the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install qemu-system-arm qemu-efi-aarch64

Installing Ubuntu

  1. Download one of the supported images:

    Server without desktop

    Desktop

  2. Copy the file to store EFI variables to the working directory:

    cp /usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd .

    This file is written to during the installation process.

  3. Create the disk image onto which you will install Ubuntu; 16 GiB should be enough:

    truncate -s 16G disk

  4. Start the installer with:

    qemu-system-aarch64 \
  -M virt,gic-version=3 \
  -m 4096 \
  -smp 4 \
  -cpu max \
  -serial mon:stdio \
  -device virtio-gpu-pci \
  -device qemu-xhci \
  -device usb-kbd \
  -device usb-tablet \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,file=/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd,readonly=on \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1,file=AAVMF_VARS.fd \
  -drive if=none,file=disk,format=raw,id=VIRTIO1 \
  -device virtio-blk,drive=VIRTIO1,bootindex=1 \
  -drive if=none,file=ubuntu-live-server-arm64.iso,format=raw,readonly=on,id=VIRTIO2 \
  -device virtio-blk,drive=VIRTIO2,bootindex=2 \
  -net nic,model=virtio \
  -net user

    Replace the ISO file name according to your download.

    Some important options to use are:

    -accel kvm

    Add this option to use KVM acceleration if your host is an ARM system that supports it.

    -cpu

    controls the emulated CPU

    -M

    selects the platform emulated by QEMU. Version 3 or higher of the ARM Generic Interrupt Controller (GIC) is needed if you want to emulate more than eight CPUs.

    -m

    specifies the memory size

    -smp

    specifies the number of CPUs

  5. Follow the installation steps in Ubuntu Server installation tutorial or the Ubuntu Desktop installation tutorial.

Running Ubuntu

When running the installed image you won’t need to reference the ISO anymore:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
  -M virt,gic-version=3 \
  -m 4096 \
  -smp 4 \
  -cpu max \
  -serial mon:stdio \
  -device virtio-gpu-pci \
  -device qemu-xhci \
  -device usb-kbd \
  -device usb-tablet \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,file=/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd,readonly=on \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1,file=AAVMF_VARS.fd \
  -drive if=none,file=disk,format=raw,id=VIRTIO1 \
  -device virtio-blk,drive=VIRTIO1,bootindex=1 \
  -net nic,model=virtio \
  -net user