Virtual machines on Apple M2 chips, with Ventura

Version

This is version 0.1

Requirements

I want to run VMs with custom networking over a bridge.

I want to use ZFS with applicable operating systems like FreeBSD or Linux.

I want more options than UTM can provide.

Solution

We'll be using qemu and virt-manager to run setup and run virtual machines on Apple M2 devices.

If you are a Linux user, virt-manager may be familiar. It can be used to connect to multiple KVM hosts over qemu+ssh and is essential in environments with Linux servers running VMs with qemu, libvirt and kvm.

Process

Install Xcode command line tools

xcode-select --install

Install Brew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install qemu, libvirt and virt-manager and related useful tools.

brew install qemu libvirt virt-manager tmux wget jq jo bash

Start the libvirt service

brew services start libvirt

Download some isos

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/ISO
cd ~/Downloads/ISO
wget -c  https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-disc1.iso
wget -c https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/22.04/release/ubuntu-22.04.3-live-server-arm64.iso
wget -c https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.3/amd64/install73.iso
wget -c https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-cd/debian-12.1.0-arm64-netinst.iso
wget -c https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/releases/aarch64/alpine-standard-3.18.3-aarch64.iso

Open virt-manager by connecting to local qemu session

virt-manager -c "qemu:///session" --no-fork

(you might want to setup an alias in .zshrc or configure a shell script)

Create a new image. When adding the source ISO, browse to the ~/Downloads/ISO directory.

Pending

bridge networking
automatic installs