Problems making a bootable aarch64-linux system image

[Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv>]

Hi folks,

I’m trying to get Guix System running in a QEMU VM on Apple ARM64 
hardware[1].  This has been much more challenging than I expected, 
and I haven’t been able to get it working at all.  I’m completely 
stuck and could use some advice and/or a working configuration I 
can hack on.

I’ve tried multiple paths to get this working, including building 
both installer and system images on arm64 and amd64 hardware.  My 
current approach is to make a bootable qcow2 system image using 
Guix as a foreign package manager on top of Debian running in a VM 
on the ARM hardware.  This is my image definition: 
https://paste.debian.net/1342063/

It’s buildable with:

  guix time-machine 
  --commit=96cd163c14e68c66c6a4cf0b18261fc454f8c1ba -- system 
  image vakum.scm

(Commits beyond 96cd163c14e68c66c6a4cf0b18261fc454f8c1ba fail, 
because guix tests are currently broken on aarch64-linux; see 
#75205)

This produces an image which boots to GRUB, but fails to boot the 
system.  It seems that the framebuffer console is initialized, 
since I see the QEMU window resize, but then I get a blinking 
cursor in the upper-left and nothing else.

Does anyone have pointers/advice/working configs for this I can 
hack on?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

  -- Ian

[1]: My work requires everyone to use a Mac, unfortunately.