Virtualizing multiple raspian installs on Pi5

Operating Systems & Open Source Virtualization
1

Is there a guide for installing multiple copies of raspian on a pi5? I have tried virtual machine manager and changing about every setting it has but it wont boot so is it actually possible or am i just missing something. I cant justify a pi board for each copy as they are basically idle 99.9%…

2

By raspbian do you mean the current Raspberry Pi OS distro? If so - then no, it’s not suited for running under hypervisor, but only on real hardware.

3

This?

assuming you want to use one of the os installs at a time?

4

no thats for multiboot.

i want to run multiple copies of raspios at the same time. im not running anything intensive so a single pi5 would run it all easily.

5

Look at this thread, there was a similar discussion, although I still don’t understand the need in rpi os in the first place. Anyway, it’s somewhat possible, with a custom kernel and some tweaks to rpios image

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6

why?

anyhow, then maybe this:
https://grimore.org/libvirt/virtualizing_raspberry_pi
?

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7

it ended up easier getting my software working on x86 ubuntu than it was getting more than one raspian copy running, so now its running on my thinkcentre m72 thin client as a VM.

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8

I found this, its a full emulated arm pi install in a x86 docker container if anyone is interested.