Start VM with QEMU on MacOS

Install qemu

brew install qemu

Download QEMU_EFI.fd

Get one of the .tar.gz from the following link.

https://gist.github.com/theboreddev/5f79f86a0f163e4a1f9df919da5eea20

I pick QEMU_EFI-a096471-edk2-stable202011.tar.gz.

curl -O https://gist.githubusercontent.com/theboreddev/5f79f86a0f163e4a1f9df919da5eea20/raw/f546faea68f4149c06cca88fa67ace07a3758268/QEMU_EFI-a096471-edk2-stable202011.tar.gz

Decompress to get QEMU_EFI.fd.

tar -xvf QEMU_EFI-a096471-edk2-stable202011.tar.gz

Download Ubuntu cloud image

Download it from Ubuntu.

curl -O https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/noble/current/noble-server-cloudimg-arm64.img

Generate SSH key pair

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "my_testing_key" -f "id_ed25519" -N '' <<< y

The above command will generate 2 files id_ed25519 (Private key) and id_ed25519.pub (Public key).

Create user-data file (cloud-init configuration)

public_key=$(cat id_ed25519.pub)

cat << EOF > user-data
#cloud-config
users:
  - name: franz
    shell: /bin/bash
    sudo: "ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"
    primary_group: my_test_group
    groups: sudo
    lock_passwd: true
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - "${public_key}"

groups:
  - my_test_group

disable_root: true

mounts:
  - ["shared", "/mnt/raw-shared", "9p", "trans=virtio,version=9p2000.L", "0", "0"]
  - ["/mnt/raw-shared", "/mnt/shared", "fuse.bindfs", "map=501/1000:@20/@1000", "0", "0"]

output:
  all: ">> /var/log/cloud-init-output.log"

package_update: true

packages:
  - bindfs

runcmd:
  - groupmod -g 1000 my_test_group
  - ufw default deny incoming
  - ufw default allow outgoing
  - ufw allow 22/tcp
  - ufw enable
  - sed -i -e '/^PermitRootLogin/s/^.*$/PermitRootLogin no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  - sed -i -e '$aAllowUsers franz' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  - systemctl restart ssh

EOF

Create vendor-data file (cloud-init configuration)

touch vendor-data

Create meta-data file (cloud-init configuration)

cat << EOF > meta-data
instance-id: my-test-instance

EOF

Start ad hoc IMDS server

IMDS stands for "Instance Metadata Service". It can expose cloud-init configuration to VM.

(This command blocks. You need to start another terminal session for the remaining steps.)

python3 -m http.server --directory .

Create shared folder

mkdir -p shared

Enlarge cloud image

qemu-img resize noble-server-cloudimg-arm64.img +50G

Start VM with qemu

(This command blocks. You need to start another terminal session for the remaining steps.)

qemu-system-aarch64                                                           \
    -machine type=virt-9.0,accel=hvf                                          \
    -bios QEMU_EFI.fd                                                         \
    -cpu host                                                                 \
    -m 1024                                                                   \
    -nographic                                                                \
    -hda noble-server-cloudimg-arm64.img                                      \
    -virtfs local,path=shared,mount_tag=shared,security_model=mapped-xattr    \
    -smbios type=1,serial=ds='nocloud;s=http://10.0.2.2:8000/'                \
    -netdev user,id=mynet0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22                              \
    -device e1000,netdev=mynet0

-m 1024 - Allocate 1024MB memory

-virtfs local,path=shared,mount_tag=shared,security_model=mapped-xattr - Share host folder shared with the VM

-smbios type=1,serial=ds='nocloud;s=http://10.0.2.2:8000/ - Tell cloud-init where IMDS is

-hda noble-server-cloudimg-arm64.img - Use cloud image as virtual hard disk

-netdev user,id=mynet0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 - Map host port 2222 to VM port 22

Connect to VM

ssh -p 2222 -i "id_ed25519" franz@localhost

Wait for cloud-init complete

(Run in VM)

sudo cloud-init status --wait

Reboot VM
Check shared folder

(Run in VM)

ls -l -d /mnt/shared

That's it.

franzwong/README.md

Start VM with QEMU on MacOS