How to Virtualize Ubuntu Core on Apple Silicon (M2 Pro) in macOS?

[osalbahr]

I found Install on a VM - Ubuntu Core which suggests using Multipass.

However, I can’t run the command in the docs:

% multipass launch core22 -n mycore22
launch failed: Unable to find an image matching "core22" in remote "".

Also, I’m not sure what this means:

% multipass info                 
No instances found.

In the GUI, I don’t see Ubuntu Core as an option:

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Originally in How to Virtualize Ubuntu Core on Apple Silicon (M2 Pro) in macOS? - #3 by osalbahr.

[sharder996]

Hi @osalbahr, at the moment Ubuntu Core in Multipass is only available on the x86_64/amd64 platform. In the near future, we hope to expand this to the arm64/aarch64 platform.

[osalbahr]

Ubuntu Version: 25.04 aarch64 (VM in UTM)

Desktop Environment (if applicable): GNOME

Problem Description:

I’d like to virtualize Ubuntu Core on Apple Silicon (M2 Pro) in macOS. I followed Build your first image to create pi.img but now I don’t know how to now virtualize it.

Relevant System Information:

M2 Pro MacBook Pro
macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 arm64

Screenshots or Error Messages:

In UTM, it just immediately fails. Probably due to Raspberry Pi emulation is broken · Issue #4827 · utmapp/UTM · GitHub.

In VirtualBox:

BdsDxe: failed to load Boot0001 "UEFI VBOX HARDDISK" from PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Scsi(0x0,0x0):
Not found
BdsDxe: No bootable option or device was found.
BdsDxe: Press any key to enter the Boot Manager Menu.

What I’ve Tried:

UTM: “Import existing drive”.

VirtualBox:

$ VBoxManage convertfromraw pi.img pi.vdi

Then creating a VM, then adding the pi.vdi in Settings > Storage.

Is there a VM solution that is known to work with pi.img?

Or what should I use other than ubuntu-core-24-pi-arm64 as the “model”? I don’t know what other model to try. I couldn’t find descriptions for the models. What’s a good one for a VM? And is there anything else that I need to change other than the “model” line?

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[osalbahr]

Using ubuntu-core-24-arm64.json made me able to boot in UTM but I am now stuck in a reboot loop. I see “error: no such device: ubuntu-boot.”.

The same in VirtualBox.

[osalbahr]

Ok, I found Install on a VM - Ubuntu Core which suggests using Multipass.

However, I can’t run the command in the docs:

% multipass launch core22 -n mycore22
launch failed: Unable to find an image matching "core22" in remote "".

Also, I’m not sure what this means:

% multipass info                 
No instances found.

In the GUI, I don’t see Ubuntu Core as an option:

[ogra]

Try asking in the Multipass category here in the forum:

Multipass

Also, The RPi uses a very specific RPi patched kernel, it will not run on most VM implementations (there are actual arm64 images using a proper Ubuntu kernel)

[osalbahr]

@ogra

(there are actual arm64 images using a proper Ubuntu kernel)

Is ubuntu-core-24-arm64 one of them? I couldn’t get it to boot in a VM either.

[ogra]

The image at the bottom of:

Ubuntu Core 24 (stable) Daily Build

Should surely work in qemu and since multipass uses that as a backend I’d also expect it to work in multipass …

Here is a thread where the qemu invocation is discussed:

QEMU arm64 (raspi image) core20 on amd64 Host

[osalbahr]

Thx, I switched to my Fedora Asahi Remix partiton and the following worked for it to boot:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
 -smp 2 \
 -m 2048 \
 -machine virt,accel=kvm \
 -cpu host \
 -net nic,model=virtio \
 -drive file=/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,readonly=on \
 -drive file=AAVMF_VARS.fd,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1 \
 -drive "file=ubuntu-core-24-arm64.img",if=none,format=raw,id=disk1 \
 -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=disk1,bootindex=1 \
 -serial mon:stdio \
 -nographic