Installing Arch Linux ARM on M1 UTM (Terminal)

15 May 2025

Prerequisites

Have a Linux box somewhere (required for creating a rootfs image)
Install UTM on your Mac

Prepare necessary files

Download the ARMv8 generic tar.gz rootfs file from Arch Linux ARM to the Linux box.

Extract the archive and obtain /boot/Image and /boot/initramfs-linux.img files.

Create an ext4 filesystem on a file and transfer the rootfs to it:

fallocate -l 2G rootfs.img
mkfs.ext4 rootfs.img
sudo mount rootfs.img /mnt
sudo tar -xvf ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt
sudo umount /mnt

Then, transfer the three files to the Mac host (e.g. with scp).

Create UTM VM

Open UTM and create a new VM:
- Choose “Virtualize” and select “Linux”
- “Use Apple Virtualization” is optional
- Tick “Boot from kernel image”
- Select the Image file for “Linux kernel”
- Select the initramfs-linux.img file for “Linux initial ramdisk”
- Don’t select a Root FS image at this point, so that UTM can create the actual virtual hard disk for us
- For terminal output, type `console=hvc0” in the “Kernel arguments” field
Set other parameters as desired

Further configuration

With the VM created, go to the settings window and click the last button on the left side labelled “New Drive”.

Select “Import” and then choose the rootfs.img file we created earlier.

Install Arch Linux

Start the VM: it would open two windows: the display window and the terminal window. The display window is not useful at this point, but don’t close it.
Go to the terminal window. Booting likely already failed, and there will be a rescue shell. This is expected.
The rootfs is likely /dev/vdb. Try
```
mount /dev/vdb /new_root
```
If that works, enter
```
exit
```
so that the system will continue booting.
If that doesn’t work, list ls /dev and try some other block devices. It could be /dev/vda or /dev/vdc, etc.
Now, we should be in the Arch Linux ARM live environment. The default passowrds are root:root and alarm:alarm.
To prepare the Arch Linux ARM live environment for the installation guide, we need a few packages:
```
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm
pacman -Sy arch-install-scripts pacman glibc
```
I also installed btrfs-progs because I wanted a btrfs root.
Finally, follow the official Arch Linux installation guide.

In particular, I use

pacstrap -K /mnt archlinuxarm-keyring base linux linux-firmware btrfs-progs vim git sudo

linux and linux-firmware are actually unnecessary for the system itself, and can be removed afterwards. It is only needed during installation for generating the initramfs for the new kernel.

Inside the chroot

Add QEMU drivers to the initramfs by modifying /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

MODULES=(virtio virtio_blk virtio_pci virtio_net)
BINARIES=(btrfs) # If btrfs is used

After finishing the installation guide, copy /mnt/boot/Image and /mnt/boot/initramfs-linux.img from the VM back to the host. The live environment has sshd enabled by default.

Before the first boot

It is necessary to copy or move Image and initramfs-linux.img to the UTM data directory at (normally) ~/Library/Containers/com.utmapp.UTM/Data/Documents/<NAME>.utm on the host because UTM makes a copy of the files we originally selected for the kernel and initramfs files.

Then, modify the kernel arguments:

console=hvc0 root=/dev/vda

Try starting the VM again. It should boot into the Arch Linux ARM system.

I use systemd-networkd for networking, so I need to create /etc/systemd/network/enp0s1.network with the following content:

[Match]
Name=enp0s1
[Network]
DHCP=yes

Then, enable the service:

systemctl enable --now systemd-networkd systemd-resolved
ln -sf /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf