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Building a Debian Buster QEMU image for AARCH64

Based on this article on building a Debian Stretch QEMU image for AARCH64.

Get base files (Debian Buster network installer image):

wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/arm64/initrd.gz
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/arm64/linux

Create a disk:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 disk.qcow2 20G

Install Debian:

qemu-system-aarch64 -smp 2 -M virt -cpu cortex-a57 -m 1G \
    -initrd initrd.gz -kernel linux \
    -append "root=/dev/ram console=ttyAMA0" \
    -device virtio-scsi-device \
    -blockdev qcow2,node-name=hd0,file.driver=file,file.filename=disk.qcow2 \
    -device scsi-hd,drive=hd0 \
    -netdev user,id=unet -device virtio-net-device,netdev=unet \
    -nographic

You need to extract the initrd.img and vmlinuz files from the qcow2 disk file. The easiest way to do this is to use nbd in a Linux environment, e.g. a Virtual Machine that has access to the qcow2 disk file:

sudo apt install nbd-client qemu qemu-utils
sudo modprobe nbd max_part=8
sudo qemu-nbd --connect=/dev/nbd0 disk.qcow2
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p1 /media/qcow
sudo cp initrd.img-4.19.0-16-arm64 vmlinuz-4.19.0-16-arm64 ../qemu/.
sync
sudo umount /dev/nbd0p1
sudo nbd-client -d /dev/nbd0

Then:

qemu-system-aarch64 -smp 2 -M virt -cpu cortex-a57 -m 1G \
  -initrd initrd.img-4.19.0-16-arm64 \
  -kernel vmlinuz-4.19.0-16-arm64 \
  -append "root=/dev/sda2 console=ttyAMA0" \
  -device virtio-scsi-device \
  -blockdev qcow2,node-name=hd0,file.driver=file,file.filename=disk.qcow2 \
  -device scsi-hd,drive=hd0 \
  -netdev user,id=unet -device virtio-net-device,netdev=unet \
  -nographic

With additional resources allocated (8 cores and 4GB RAM):

qemu-system-aarch64 -smp 8 -M virt -cpu cortex-a57 -m 4G \
  -initrd initrd.img-4.19.0-16-arm64 \
  -kernel vmlinuz-4.19.0-16-arm64 \
  -append "root=/dev/sda2 console=ttyAMA0" \
  -device virtio-scsi-device \
  -blockdev qcow2,node-name=hd0,file.driver=file,file.filename=disk.qcow2 \
  -device scsi-hd,drive=hd0 \
  -netdev user,id=unet -device virtio-net-device,netdev=unet \
  -nographic

Login and setup sudo:

su - -c "apt -y install sudo"
su - -c "usermod -aG sudo matt"
exit

Login again:

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo echo "%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/01_sudo-nopassword

Install some basic utilities and disable the graphical desktop:

sudo apt -y install curl gcc make unzip zip vim git build-essential libz-dev zlib1g-dev
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

Kernel Version

Install a newer kernel version in Debian Buster.