Add post 2023-08-13-vms on m2 pro2.md

Having virtual machines on Apple M2 Pro - even better

_posts/2023-07-30-vms on m2 pro.md

@@ -147,4 +147,7 @@ That was it!
 It was worth the effort. Check out [this screen recording](https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/6aiFHkLw) to see, how fast the VM is booting.
 
 # To do
-I'll have to find a way to keep manually compiled and installed software up to date.
+I'll have to find a way to keep manually compiled and installed software up to date.
+
+# An even better alternative
+Having used **VMware Fusion** on arm64 for a while, I stumbled over an even better alternative. Read about it [here](https://blog.purejava.org/posts/vms-on-m2-pro2/).

_posts/2023-08-13-vms on m2 pro2.md

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+---
+title: Having virtual machines on Apple M2 Pro - even better
+date: 2023-08-13 18:10:00 +/-0000
+categories: [Virtualization, UTM]
+tags: [devops]     # TAG names should always be lowercase
+---
+# VMware Fusion on M2 Pro
+VMware Fusion does run well on Apple M2 Pro. Nevertheless, it suffers from a performance issue. Certain write-to-disc operations take very long. It happens quite often, that you, e.g. clone a repository and have to wait for about 30 seconds, after the operation finished, until your prompt returns. This is nothing specific to `git`, but happens to all kind of actions.
+It looks, as if there is a problem in writing data to the virtual disc or using the attached cache or whatsoever.
+And it happened with different guest OSes.
+
+I could not find out, what it is. As this is closed source, there is no reasonable way to find the root cause. I updated Fusion to the **Public Tech Preview 2023**, that was released a couple of weeks ago, hoping, that this would fix the issue. It went better, but the issue was still there.
+
+# An even better alternative
+Searching for an alternative, I found **[UTM  ](https://mac.getutm.app/)**, a virtualization tool for macOS and iOS, that employs Apple's Hypervisor virtualization framework to run ARM64 operating systems on Apple Silicon at near native speeds. That sounds good and is good!
+
+# Getting the App from the App Store
+It's unbelievable, but the app is free! You can get it from the link above or at the **App Store**. I recommend, to buy it at the App Store for only 10 Eur, which supports further development and ensures, that you'll be noticed about updates of the app, once installed.
+
+# Retrieving your VM
+UTM even provides pre-defined VMs, ready to download and install on your computer. That's fantastic - even an **ARM64 Arch Linux** VM is available. The only thing that needs to be noticed is, that you should use the **download** link to get the VM. There is a second option in the UTM app gallery - a web page that lists available VMs for your platform - for the VM to start: "open in UTM". This lets you start the VM, but it is only available within UTM until the next reboot of your host.
+
+As we want a permanent VM, that is stored on the SSD, we go for the first option.
+
+# Configuring the VM
+The pre-defined Arch Linux VM has a disc space of **10 GB** and **2 GB** of RAM configured. I need an Arch system, that runs a desktop environment, so these need to be changed.
+
+So let's alter the preferences of the VM:
+## RAM
+The RAM setting can be changed directly in the VMs settings in the `System` tab.
+
+## Display
+Same with the display settings. The display settings are missing in the VMs settings, but can easily be added in the `Devices` tab > New ... .
+I've chosen `virtio-ramfb-gl (GPU supported)`, that gives me a fast display of the VM in the native **Retina** resolution of the host. Also check, that the display size gets adjusted to the window size and enable the `Retina-Mode`.
+
+## Virtual disc
+The disc has a size of 10 GB, which is too less for a non-server OS. We need to increase it. The instructions to do so are taken from Siytek's blog[^footnote]. Many thanks to Simon Ogden.
+
+- [ ] Increase virtual disc
+  + [x] Resize in the UI
+  + [ ] Resize the partition
+  + [ ] Resize the file system
+
+First, you choose the `VirtIO` drive in the VMs settings and resize the drive with the `Resize` button. As this increases the virtual disc, the Linux partition on the virtual disc needs to be increased too.
+
+- [ ] Increase virtual disc
+  + [ ] Resize in the UI
+  + [x] Resize the partition
+  + [ ] Resize the file system
+
+To do this, start the VM and, on the CLI, enter:
+```shell
+fdisk -l
+```
+
+This lists your discs, attached to your VM and informs you with a `size mismatch error`, that the virtual disc was increased. That's good and what we did.
+
+The output above also shows us, that the partition `/dev/vda2` still has its old size. So let us change this too.
+
+We start the disc partitioning tool by entering:
+```shell
+fdisk /dev/vda
+```
+
+Hit `p` to print the partitions. Partition `/dev/vda2` is the second in the list, so we can delete it with `d 2`. Never mind: the data of the installed Arch OS gets preserved.
+
+Next, type `n` at the prompt to create a new partition. We will recreate the primary partition, filling the entire free space. Enter the primary partition number, it's `2` again.
+> Important: when prompted to remove the signature, enter `N` to keep the installed Arch OS data.
+{: .prompt-danger }
+
+When you type `p` now, it shows that the partition takes all remaining space of the virtual drive. We are nearly done.
+> Don't forget to hit `w` to write your changes to disc.
+{: .prompt-tip }
+
+Exit fdisk and reboot your VM.
+
+The last necessary step is to resize the file system.
+
+- [x] Increase virtual disc
+  + [x] Resize in the UI
+  + [x] Resize the partition
+  + [x] Resize the file system
+
+On the CLI, enter:
+```shell
+resize2fs /dev/vda2
+```
+
+Now, when you check the free disc space, the primary root partition has been expanded into the newly created disk space:
+
+```shell
+df -h
+```
+
+# Some obstacles, that need to be circumvented
+t.b.c.
+## Footnotes
+[^footnote]: [How To Increase a UTM Virtual Machine Disk Size](https://siytek.com/increase-utm-virtual-machine-disk-size/)