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UTM (qemu on OSX) only boots into uefi shell after installing Ubuntu 22.10 (solved!)

I've been meaning to try out running Linux and Windows virtual machines on my x86 MacBook Pro using qemu.

I've been using Parallels for several years. Parallels is a nice application and works well but I'm always getting bugged to purchase upgrades. Parallels provides free updates on minor version upgrades only, say 13.0 to 13.1. With so many prompts to purchase upgrades it feels like Parallels could release a bit more minor versions and a bit fewer major versions.

Rather than just purchase an upgrade to Parallels I figured I'd try out qemu via the UTM application. UTM wraps qemu with a helpful gui and comes as a packages Mac application. And UTM supports both x86 and M1 systems (as qemu also supports these systems).

Creating an Ubuntu VM with UTM didn't go as smoothly as with VirtualBox or Parallels but it was the settings I chose that messed me up. Here are two things I ran into when installing Ubuntu on UTM.


#1. Configure the qemu instance to use a 'Display' 'Emulated Display Card' driver of 'virtio-vga' (not virtio-vga-gl). With the '-gl' driver the desktop of the Ubuntu installer was drawn but the dialog window to guide you through the installer came up filled with blue. NOTE: You should switch the driver back to 'virtio-vga-gl' after Ubuntu is installed for efficiency and performance.


#2. Use a storage driver of 'NVMe' and not 'SCSI'.

Don't use 'SCSI' like I did :-)



NVMe worked for me




I saw IDE and the other options and figured SCSI was close enough, probably because I'm old and the other options like IDE seemed even older. Ubuntu installed smoothly, prompted for a reboot after ejecting the virtual ubuntu installer .iso, and then booted into the uefi shell...


I reinstalled a few times but kept getting the uefi shell, which typically means that uefi couldn't find any bootable drives.

Switching from SCSI to NVMe resolved the issue (without having to install again), and Ubuntu booted right up. I'm guessing the issue is that uefi doesn't know about SCSI drives but does know about NVMe drives.




Yay, Ubuntu running smoothly in qemu!!!!!



Don't forget to switch the display driver back to 'virtio-vga-gl'.





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