Image | Add support for ARMv8 VMs

[CypZ]

Creating an image request

Goal is to run DietPi on my rpi 4B but on top of ESXi, not on bare metal. As far as I can see only x86_64 images are available for VMware.

Formal device information

• Device name | VMware/ESXi ARMv8 64-bit
• Official product URL | https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition
• GitHub resource URL (if available) |
• Image download URL |

Is the SBC officially supported by the Debian installer?

• Debian generally support arm64 (and VMware virtual environment too) : https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/arm64/ch02s01.html.en

If not, is a reliable 3rd party Debian image available for this SBC?

• ...

If not, are there install instructions for Debian available?

• https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/arm64/ch02s01.html.en
• https://williamlam.com/2020/10/how-to-run-raspberry-pi-os-as-a-vm-on-esxi-arm.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN1h2ztUHLo

[MichaIng]

@bbugh As you requested the same, moving discussion here.

Providing a VMX appliance and VMware/ESXi can go hand in hand, I think there is not much needed to change within the VMX (config) file. For the containing image, AFAIK it is only grub-efi-arm64 and the regular linux-image-arm64 kernel? I guess we could also go with the linux-image-current-arm64 kernel from Armbian, but aside of some lower disk space usage, I don't think that it has much benefits.

Tasks to do:

• Decide whether to add a new hardware ID for ARMv8 VMs oder whether to review and rework some parts of our code where ID 20 is currently treated as x86_64. Not sure what makes more work, I'd probably check of $G_HW_MODEL == 20 in our code and see how often this happens and how much work it would be to add another differentiation for $G_HW_ARCH in case. But I think in most cases where the architecture plays a role we do already check for the architecture, while VMs of any architecture have sufficiently much in common to handle them below the same ID.
• Generate bare img (or VMDK) and import it into new ESXi-Arm VM. Then export the appliance if it works. What I want to know is the VMX and/or OVF config file, to compare with the x86_64 ones and have a template. I hope that they are mostly identical.

[oxoocoffee]

Please let me know if I can assist by providing information or testing on MBP M1 Parallels 19 or UTM.

[Najihel]

Hello,

Same request to host dietpi VM on Freebox Server (KVM)

Thanks