This is a simple script to run qemu arm64 system simulation on x86 host with prebuilt image. Tested on QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 on Ubuntu22.04 LTS host.

run_qemu_ubuntu2204_arm64.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Disclaimer:
# This is a simple script to run qemu arm64 system simulation on x86 host with
# prebuilt image. Tested on QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 on Ubuntu22.04 LTS host.
#

# Directory layout:
# qemu_ubuntu2204_arm64;
# ├── cloud-config.img
# ├── cloud-config.txt
# ├── QEMU_EFI.fd
# ├── run_qemu_ubuntu2204_arm64.sh
# └── ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img


# Step 1: sudo apt install qemu-system-aarch64 guestfs-tools cloud-image-utils
# Step 2: mkdir -p qemu_ubuntu2204_arm64; cd qemu_ubuntu2204_arm64
# Step 3: wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/22.04/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img
# Step 4: wget https://releases.linaro.org/components/kernel/uefi-linaro/latest/release/qemu64/QEMU_EFI.fd
# Step 5:
#         cat <<EOF > cloud-config.txt
#         #cloud-config
#         users:
#           - default
#           - name: <your login user name>
#             ssh-authorized-keys:
#               - ssh-rsa <your login public key>
#             sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL']
#             groups: sudo
#             shell: /bin/bash
#         EOF
# Step 6: cloud-localds --disk-format qcow2 cloud-config.img cloud-config.txt
# Step 7: sudo virt-customize -a ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img --root-password password:<root password for tty login>
# Step 8: (execute the following script)


qemu-system-aarch64 -m 1024 -smp 2 -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt -nographic \
  -bios QEMU_EFI.fd \
  -drive if=none,file=ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img,id=hd0 \
  -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
  -drive if=none,id=cloud-config,file=cloud-config.img \
  -device virtio-blk-device,drive=cloud-config \
  -netdev user,id=user0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
  -device virtio-net-device,netdev=user0
#  --loadvm mysnapshot

# Step 9: Create snapshot while QEMU executing (use Ctrl-A + c)
# (qemu) savevm mysnapshot
# (qemu) info snapshots
# List of snapshots present on all disks:
# ID     TAG           VM SIZE     DATE     VM CLOCK     ICOUNT
# --     mysnapshot    783 MiB     2024-03-31 22:48:54 00:10:10.584