Error Installing Incus on Raspberry Pi

incus : Depends: qemu-system-arm (>= 1:8.0)

Recently I attempted to install Incus to a Raspberry Pi using the Incus docs, which outlines install instructions for Debian.

The error above occurred because I was installing to Debian Bookworm and the dependencies are also in the backports Repository. There are two possible solutions.

Using Incus for Containers Only

If you only want to use lightweight containers on your Raspberry Pi, then installing incus-base is your best bet.

~# apt install incus-base

Using Incus to Manage VMs on Raspberry Pi

If you want to run full blown VMs on your Raspberry Pi, which is probably going to perform poorly, you must install the dependencies as well.

~# apt install incus/bookworm-backports qemu-system-arm/bookworm-backports qemu-system-common/bookworm-backports qemu-system-data/bookworm-backports seabios/bookworm-backports

Launch a Debian Trixie VM with Incus

$ incus launch images:debian/trixie --vm

“qemu-system-aarch64”: executable file not found in $PATH

I ran into this problem immediately after installing Incus. I tried sudo apt install qemu-system-aarch64/bookworm-backports but was presented with a message that qemu-system-arm64 was already installed. I verified qemu-system-aarch64 was in /usr/bin with which qemu-system-aarch64, and for good measure verified /usr/bin was in my $PATH with echo "$PATH"

Finally, I rebooted. Problem resolved. If you know of a command that might have fixed this without a reboot, please leave a comment.