Arch Linux Parallels VM on M1 (Apple Silicon)

Can Arch Linux run on MacBook Pro with Parallels?

#

Yes! I use an Arch Linux ARM VM on my MacBook Pro almost every day. It works quite well.

However, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about installing and running Arch Linux on Apple Silicon. At the time of this post, the Arch Linux wiki currently directs users to this article by Parallels to install Arch Linux on Apple Silicon. However, the Parallel instructions are old and do not work.

To be fair, the Arch Wiki does provide a download for a pre-installed VM that is ready to go. However, it’s set up with very low storage options (partitioning) and was basically useless for a daily driver for my needs.

I will attempt to keep this post recent.

Where can I download Arch Linux ARM?

#

archboot.com

#

The best place to download Arch Linux ARM for use with Parallels VM is archboot.com. Download the standard ISO image - at the time of this writing, there is also a “local” (offline) installer, but it doesn’t actually work for me. It gets stuck creating a container and never finishes.

A Note on setup scripts (Do not use them)

#

Once you download the archboot ISO and boot off it, it will automatically start up with a CLI “GUI” installer helper program. Do not use this to install Arch. It is broken. Instead, you should follow the Installation Guide on the Arch Wiki.

You can let the GUI set up networking to easily get connected to the internet.

Don’t worry, I’ll post screenshots of every single step I did to make this work.

Installation

#

Alright, let’s get started!

Create and configure new Parallels VM

#

Boot live ISO

#

Partition the disks

#

You can view all your disks and existing partitions with:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 128GB, 137438953472 bytes, 268435456 sectors
Disk model: Arch Test-0 SSD
Units: sectors 1 of * 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Since we just created this VM and disk, there are no partitions. You should just see /dev/sda and any other virtual disks you might have created.

To partition the disks, I prefer using cfdisk. Type cfdisk, then select gpt from the list and press Enter:

Now you should see your /dev/sda device in cfdisk, showing free space:

You can create partitions now. The up/down arrow keys allow you to move up and down the partition list, and right/left allow you to select the commands at the bottom of the screen. Enter executes the selected command.

Make sure your partition types are set correctly. At minimum, you should have:

• EFI System - Set this to 512m.
• Linux swap - I have this set to 8g. What number you select depends on your use-cases. Here’s a decent article explaining swap sizes.
• Linux root (ARM-64) - Remaining space of the drive.

Finally, ensure you select Write within cfdisk and confirm with yes, then Enter. Once the partition table is written, you can select Quit to exit cfdisk.

You can confirm the partitions were created with:

fdisk -l

Device        Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1      2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/sda2   1050624  17827839  16777216     8G Linux swap
/dev/sda3  17827840 268433407 250605568 119.5G Linux root (ARM-64)

Format the partitions

#

In case you need to view the partition identifiers, remember to use fdisk -l.

EFI partition

#

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda2

Swap space

#

mkswap /dev/sda3

Root and home partitions

#

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

Mount partitions

#

Mount the root volume to /mnt.

mount /dev/sda4 /mnt

mount --mkdir /dev/sdaX /mnt/home

Mount the EFI partition to /mnt/boot

mount --mkdir /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot

Activate the swap partition

swapon /dev/sda3

If all went well, you can check that everything is properly mounted with:

lsblk

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0   128G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /mnt/boot
├─sda2   8:2    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda3   8:3    0 119.5G  0 part /mnt
sr0      11:0   1 342.3M  0 rom
zram0   251:0   0     5G  0 disk /

Disable package signing

#

To disable package signing, edit the file /etc/pacman.conf and comment out the line with SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional (comment so you can easily reenable it later) and add a new line with SigLevel = Never:

#SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional
SigLevel = Never

Installing essential packages

#

pacstrap is a tool that comes with Arch Linux to install the initial packages you want for your new setup. At a minimum, you need these packages:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux grub efibootmgr bash-completion neovim terminus-font git

I’ve added terminus-font as a minimum for Archboot, otherwise the rest of the process will fail. For vanilla Arch Linux, terminus-font is not required. For Archboot,terminus-font has to be installed separately because it doesn’t get auto-installed correctly via Archboot, and will cause errors when the linux image is being generated.

This will take some time to install, depending on your internet connection. Once complete, we can move on to the next step, where we’re configure the system.

Configure the installation

#

Generate /etc/fstab

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Change root into the new system. This will “enter” us into the newly installed environment:

arch-chroot /mnt

Set the time zone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

Replace Region and City with your own. For example, my closest timezone region and city are America/Detroit.

Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime:

hwclock --systohc

Configure localization settings:

1. Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment your locales. Mine is en_US.UTF-8.
2. Save and close the file.
3. Run locale-gen.

Create /etc/locale.conf and set the LANG variable to the value you uncommented in /etc/locale.gen:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Finally, set your hostname in /etc/hostname.

Disable package signing on the installed OS

#

I also mentioned earlier that package signing is broken in the current release of Archboot ARM, and we had already disabled it for the live ISO. But after arch-chroot we have to disable it again for the installed (not the live ISO) system.

To disable package signing, we do the same thing as before. Edit the file /etc/pacman.conf and comment out the line with SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional (comment so you can easily reenable it later) and add a new line with SigLevel = Never:

#SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional
SigLevel = Never

Then save and exit.

Initramfs (Installing the Linux kernel)

#

Earlier I mentioned when running pacstrap with the linux package might show errors. Just to make sure the Initramfs is configured, we’ll manually run:

mkinitcpio -P

Set the root password

#

Enter this command to set the password for the root user:

passwd

Then follow the prompts to enter your password twice.

Boot loader (Grub)

#

I prefer Grub as I’m familiar with it, it’s super popular, easy to set up, and I know it works with Parallels VMs on ARM, so that’s what I’ll show here.

That being said, you can try to use whatever boot loader you want. See the Arch Linux Wiki info on boot loaders.

Earlier when we ran pacstrap we already installed the grub and efibootmgr packages. If you hadn’t, you can install them with:

pacman -S grub efibootmgr

Next, install the bootloader with grub-install:

grub-install --target=arm64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB

The grub bootloader will use the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg to boot the OS each time the VM starts. To generate grub.cfg, run:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

If successful, you should see output similar to this:

Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/Image
Warning: os-prober will not be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Systems on them will not be added to the GRUB boot configuration.
Check GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER documentation entry.
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done

Create your user account

#

useradd -m -G wheel username
passwd username

Enter your password twice.

Now, you probably want to grant your new user the ability to execute commands with sudo. To do so, let’s edit the /etc/sudoers file:

EDITOR=nvim visudo # or nano if you prefer

Find this section:

## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
# %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

and uncomment this line:

%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Then save the file and close it.

Configure VM network (get on the internet)

#

You can use all sorts of tools for network configuration. The current default for Arch Linux is systemd-networkd. You can follow that Arch Wiki article for examples of configurations.

For my VM, I’m going to enable DHCP. First, get the name of your network interface with ip link command, which should return you something like enp0s5 (in my case). Then you can configure DHCP for the network interface like this:

/etc/systemd/network/20-wired.network:

[Match]
Name=enp0s5

[Network]
DHCP=yes

Now link systemd-resolved to /etc/resolv.conf:

sudo ln -sf /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

Once you’ve configured systemd-networkd, you’ll want to next enable it as well as systemd-resolved so the VM will get connected to the network automatically upon boot:

sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd systemd-resolved

Reboot

#

Your system is now installed! Exit the arch-chroot environment with exit command or Ctrl + D. Then you can simply type reboot and the VM should reboot.

Log in to your new VM

#

Once it reboots, you’ll momentarily see this screen:

You can let the timer run to auto-select Arch Linux or press enter to start it without waiting for the boot countdown. Once booted, you should see the login screen:

Use the username and password you set when creating your account. You can also log in as root user, but that’s not recommended.

You should be online in the VM, if your network configuration was correctly set up. You can test with a ping:

ping archlinux.org

Update Arch Linux

#

To ensure Arch Linux is updated to the latest:

pacman -Syyu

Install yay

#

yay is an AUR (Arch User Repository) helper. You’ll want to install it for easy automated installations from the AUR.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

Verify yay:

yay --version

Clean up:

cd ..
rm -rf yay

yay takes the same options as pacman but whereas you run sudo pacman, never run sudo yay. Just run yay without sudo. This is for security reasons, as AUR scripts shouldn’t be trusted by default.

Install Parallels Tools

#

From the Parallels Actions menu, select Install Parallels Tools. Then:

sudo pacman -S linux-headers dkms
sudo mount --mkdir /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
sudo /mnt/cdrom/install

Final Notes

#

Hopefully all went well and you’ve got a functioning minimum Arch Linux installation. If any part of this guide didn’t work for you, please reach out as I’d like to know so I can update this article.

If you want a desktop environment, the Arch Linux Wiki has you covered.

I have been using KDE Plasma of late. For a quick setup guide, see my post here.

If you want an easy method for installing unofficial packages from the Arch User Repository (AUR), see my post here.