Automated archlinux vm install

Automated installation of Archlinux in a QEMU/KVM virtual-machine.

An example script to use the archiso and its cloud-init support to automatically create and install an Archlinux VM, from scratch.

Requirements on the host are: qemu (and UEFI support files), curl and python (for its http.server as a pseudo-IMDS server).

Contents:

• start.sh - is the script that does it all downdloads iso, creates files as needed, starts the imds server, starts qemu
• imds/ - directory for the imds data, cloud-init metadata, for the automated install, and also some config files for the target guest.

HOW

The archiso live image supports cloud-init. We use the fake "IMDS" support in cloud-init, made to work with qemu. A http.server is started from the imds directory, and the host url (http://10.0.2.2:8000/) is configured as a cloud-init IMDS source (see -smbios …).

As the live iso boots, cloud-init reads the imds/user-data file and configures both the live environment, but also sets up partitions and filesystems, and bootstraps Arch on the permanent disk storage.

Connect to the VM

Either ssh:

ssh root@localhost -p 2222 -o "UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null"

or vnc:

gvncviewer ::1:5900

Created files - if you remove them, they'll be recreated from scratch

• archlinux-x86_64.iso - archiso, delete if you want it re-downloaded
• arch-vm.img - VM qcow2 image (delete these 2 to install from scratch)
• OVMF_VARS.fd - UEFI config storage (delete these 2 to install from scratch)