Install Archlinux in QEMU with Bridge on Guix

2026-02-08
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User group

To use KVM, the current user needs to be in the kvm group: 

(user-account
 (name "you")
 (group "users")
 (supplementary-groups '("kvm"
                         ;; ... other groups
                         )))

UEFI

In Guix, OVMF files are provided by the package ovmf-x86-64. 

export OVMF=/gnu/store/$(ls -F /gnu/store | grep 'ovmf-x86-64.*/' | head -n 1)
cp $OVMF/share/firmware/ovmf_vars_x64.bin .
chmod +x ovmf_vars_x64.bin

qemu-bridge-helper

The cookbook (guix-cookbook#Network bridge for QEMU) described how to make it work, but the information at the time of writing this post is somewhat incomplete.

The first thing is to add it to the privileged program list: 

(privileged-program
 (program (file-append qemu "/libexec/qemu-bridge-helper"))
 (setuid? #t))

This will add it to /run/privileged/bin/.

In order to use it properly, it needs to be specified in the command line options, as: 

-nic bridge,br=br0,helper=$(which qemu-bridge-helper),model=virtio-net-pci

Bridge

Do what "Creating a network bridge interface" section says. However, I believe the filename is "/etc/qemu/bridge.conf".

Installation

qemu-img create -o nocow=on -f qcow2 archlinux.cow 20G

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 4096 -smp 1 -enable-kvm \
                   -nic bridge,br=br0,helper=$(which qemu-bridge-helper),model=virtio-net-pci -boot menu=on,order=d \
                   -drive file=archlinux.cow \                                                                       
-drive media=cdrom,readonly=on,file=archlinux-2026.02.01-x86_64.iso \
       -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=$OVMF/share/firmware/ovmf_code_x64.bin \                                       
-drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=ovmf_vars_x64.bin \
       -vga virtio

Run

qemu-system-x86_64 \
    -enable-kvm -m 4096 -smp 1 \
    -nic bridge,br=br0,helper=$(which qemu-bridge-helper),model=virtio-net-pci \
    -device virtio-blk,drive=myhd \
    -drive if=none,file=archlinux.cow,id=myhd \
    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=$OVMF/share/firmware/ovmf_code_x64.bin \
    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=ovmf_vars_x64.bin \
    -vga virtio

Reference