Debian User Forums

Dear forum,

I have installed virtualbox 7.1.2 on a apple silicon M1 macbook pro with macos 14.6.1. I would like to install debian 12.7.0-arm64.

I tried the virtualbox unattended install and multiple variations of manual install. The installation always runs well until the virtual machine is re-started. But then the UEFI interactive shell appears and I didn't find any way to start grub and then debian.

In my desperation I tried ubuntu, and this seems to work well. I can create snapshots, re-start them and even install the virtualbox guest additions.

Is this a known issue, or did I overlook anything?

Thanks and kind regards

Have you tried a Debian live system with the Calamares installer?

No,
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/
says:
Architecture: Currently only images for 64-bit PC (amd64) are provided.
Apple silicon has an arm64 architecture.
Is there any live image that supports arm64?

plumeros wrote: ↑2024-10-11 16:24
Is there any live image that supports arm64?

Yes.
https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst.en.html

I tried these installations, both should support arm64 architectures:
network installation: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst.en.html -> https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... etinst.iso
and
full DVD installation: https://www.debian.org/CD -> https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... -DVD-1.iso

Both images contain the "normal" installer, but no live system with the Calamares installer.
Unfortunately for now I would not know any live image for the arm64 architecture.

Did you click the arm64 link from the link I gave?

Under
https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst.en.html
I can see 3 arm64 links under the following titles:
- Small CDs or USB sticks
- Tiny CDs, flexible USB sticks, etc.
- Network boot
The only one which contains an iso image is the one under "Small CDs or USB sticks".
This is one of the images I tried.

Hello, I have the same issue trying to install Debian netinst on VirtualBox 7.1.2 on Apple Silicon.

For anyone else having issues, you can refer to this youtube video. VBOX needs a startup script in UEFI, my guess is that by default if there is no script and it will try to boot a grubx64.efi (amd64 architecture). But with apple silicon this should be grubaa64.efi - just my speculation that this is the cause of the bug. Regardless, make the startup.nsh with the correct commands and you should be up and running.

Hi cjcdev,
yes, this solved the issue. Thanks a lot!