Guix under QEMU on Aarch64?

[James Geddes <james@jamesgeddes.org>]

I'd like to run Guix (the distribution) under QEMU on Aarch64 but I am really struggling to boot. I wonder if anyone has succeeded and could offer advice?

I *can* run Ubuntu (under QEMU on Aarch64); and in Ubuntu I have installed Guix as a package manager. That all works (very) nicely.

In Ubuntu-under-qemu I built a CD installer with `guix system image --image-type=iso9660 install.scm`, and created a "blank" drive using `qemu-img`. I run the installer (back on the native side) with:

```   
qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -nographic \
    -cpu host -machine virt,accel=hvf \
    -smp 4 -m 4G \
    -drive if=virtio,file=guix.iso,media=cdrom \
    -drive if=virtio,file=guix.qcow2 \
    -device virtio-rng-pci \
    -bios edk2-aarch64-code.fd
```

That gets as far as the menu asking to install Guix; and then gives this error:

```
error: plain image kernel not supported - rebuild with CONFIG_(U)EFI_STUB
enabled.
error: you need to load the kernel first.
```

So! I have three questions!

1. Should I, in fact, attempt to rebuild the kernel with CONFIG_EFI_STUB enabled? If so, is there anything I should be aware of (noting I am new to Guix and everything I knew about building kernels is 25 years out of date)? 

2. Or should I try to make QEMU use U-boot? (Which I understand is perhaps more common for aarch64 systems?)

3. Or is all this a red herring?  

Many thanks for any advice!

(NB: I have tried a few other things: `guix system init ... config.scm` to a new drive; and `guix system image --image-type=qcow2 config.scm` (which fails for other reasons I don't understand).) 


James

James Geddes
GitHub: triangle-man