smartos-docs

SmartOS as a UTM Guest on Apple Silicon

Detailed Guide

UTM is a virtual machine host for macOS based on QEMU.

Currently installing SmartOS on UTM with Apple Silicon is experimental. If you are new to SmartOS and want to try in a VM, it would be best to try this on a host with x86_64 architecture (Intel/AMD). The instructions here are intended for testing and development use cases.

Because running SmartOS under UTM on Apple Sillicon requires using full emulation, the experience is not as good as it would be using x86_64 hardware. Issues users have encountered include tasks taking a very long time and zones failing to provision or boot.

The settings below should be sufficient to get a SmartOS vm running under UTM. There may be additional performance improvements to be made, and the guidance may require updates as changes are made to UTM.

Note: KVM and bhyve guests are not supported when running under full emulation.

Download and verify the latest SmartOS iso image from the downloads page
In UTM, click “Create a New Virtual Machine”
Select “Emulate”
Select “Other”
Under “Boot ISO Image” choose the image you downloaded

Settings

Architecture: x86_64
System: Standard PC (Q35 + ICH, 2009) (alias of pc-q35-7.2) (q35)
Memory: 2048 MB or larger
CPU: Haswell (others may work)
CPU Cores: Default
Drive size: 25 GB or larger
Shared Directory: leave this disabled
Name: SmartOS (or your choice)
Check the box “Open VM Settings”

System tab

Check Force Multicore

UTM Settings Tab

QEMU tab

Check Debug Logging (will be useful on diagnosing issues)
Uncheck UEFI Boot
Uncheck RNG Device

UTM QEMU Tab

Input tab

USB Support: Disabled

UTM Input Tab

Network tab

Network Mode: Bridged (Advanced)
Emulated Network Card: Intel Gigabit Ethernet (e1000)

UTM Network Tab

Drives tab

Change the disk drive interface from IDE to VirtIO
The DVD/CD ROM drive interface must be IDE

Drives Tab

Devices (optional)

Add a new serial device
The default built in terminal can be used that will open when the VM is started
TCP Server Connection can also be used to select a port and connect over TCP
PseudoTTY can also be used which can then be used with the screen command
For more information on serial devices in UTM please refer to the UTM documentation

Devices Tab

Installation

From here, install SmartOS following the normal installation process.