Slackware Aarch64 and Virtualization

Virtualization on the Aarch64 architecture simplifies research, development, and testing. The goal of this document is to aid the user to create a favorable environment without any complicated requirements. The hope is that this will enable more Slackware ARM users to contribute to the project. This guide targets the RockPro64, the Pinebook Pro, and the Honeycomb LX2K hardware models. This same process may work on the Raspberry Pi 4, but remains untested.

• Full installation of Slackware Aarch64
• Qemu built with the aarch64 target
• libvirt as the back end
• virt-manager as the GUI for local and remote access
• netcat-openbsd to enable remote connections to libvirt

• The build scripts are here
• Pre-built packages here.

In the future the pre-built packages will become outdated and you will need to rebuild the packages with the included build scripts. The current package set was built on the Aarch64 port of Slackware-current. The software is constantly upgraded in Slackware-current. What works now, may not work tomorrow. It is recommended that the packages are rebuilt often as an exercise for the user.

The whole bundle can be downloaded from the Slackware.uk public mirror like so:

$ mkdir -p /tmp/slackware-aarch64-virtualization
$ cd /tmp/slackware-aarch64-virtualization
$ rsync -Paav slackware.uk::slackwarearm/people/brent/slackware-aarch64-virtualization/ .

Then enter the directory if you are not already in it:

cd /tmp/slackware-aarch64-virtualization/virtualization-scripts

Verify the SlackBuild scripts are all marked executable.

chmod -v +x arm/build  */arm/build */*SlackBuild  tools/refresh.source

Remove stock netcat:

removepkg nc

To verify the checksum of existing source archives without having to download them again:

CHECK=1 REFRESH=0 ./tools/refresh.source 

Output should look similar to:

spice-protocol-0.14.4.tar.xz: OK
spice-0.15.1.tar.bz2: OK
spice-gtk-0.42.tar.xz: OK
gtk-vnc-1.3.1.tar.xz: OK
lloyd-yajl-2.1.0-0-ga0ecdde.tar.gz: OK
libvirt-9.1.0.tar.xz: OK
libvirt-python-9.1.0.tar.gz: OK
libvirt-glib-4.0.0.tar.xz: OK
osinfo-db-tools-1.10.0.tar.xz: OK
osinfo-db-20230308.tar.xz: OK
libosinfo-1.10.0.tar.xz: OK
virt-manager-4.1.0.tar.gz: OK
libmd-1.1.0.tar.xz: OK
libbsd-0.11.7.tar.xz: OK
netcat-openbsd-7.3_1.tar.gz: OK
qemu-7.2.1.tar.xz: OK

CHECK=0 REFRESH=1 ./tools/refresh.source 

Execute the build script in the root of the tree:

./arm/build

Then you wait. Depending on your system, it could be a significantly long time frame to wait. Each package will be built and installed automatically. The build script will exit if a build fails or cannot be installed/upgraded.

TODO: screen shots

Configure system to start the Libvirt daemon during system boot.

chmod -v +x /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt  /etc/rc.d/rc.local
vim /etc/rc.d/rc.local 

Add in rc.local

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt ]; then
    /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt start
fi

To start the daemon without restarting your machine:

/etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt start

TODO: screen shots

Your virtual machine host can be a x86, x86_64, or aarch64. Other architectures were not tested. It can be accessed remotely on your local network through the virt-manager graphical environment on your Aarch64 machine. It is all interchangeably the same scenario for each architecture. On 32 bit ARM, its possible to use just Virt-manager to access other machines running qemu virtual machines.