Unable to install Linux on M4 with Parallels 20

Hi,

I posted in the M4 thread but hoping to get some response in a separate thread... Installing Debian Stable, Debian Testing, and Kali Linux using the ARM64 isos always seems to segfault when the installer gets to installing the kernel. I've tried with weekly and daily builds of the above distros without success.

Steps to reproduce
1) Create a new VM, select the image
2) Progress through the installer until the base system is installing
3) Wait for the install to die due to "Installation step failed: Select and install software"

Looking at tty4, something is segfaulting during initramfs generation. Image attached.

 

So I was with the support yesterday for over one hour for this exact problem.
It turns out when you have an M4 and you give the VM more than one CPU core it segfaults. So for now, until they fix it just set all vms to just one core (also new ones before installation) and everything should run smoothly.

 

I have the same issue with Kali Linux 2024.2 on my M4 Max. I am unable to update it after installation or to install a newer Java OpenJDK version. I always receive a SIGILL.


I also faced this error when I restarted the VM sometimes.

Last week, I had no troubles installing Kali Linux and installing what I needed. I don't know what has changed with macOS 15.2 .

 

A new Parallels release (20.1.3) was released this morning that addresses the segfault issue on the Mac M4 systems. It resolved the issue on my M4 Mini.

 

This new release 20.1.3 does not fix the problem with Kali Linux (or any other Linux). Luckily, I am now able to to an dist-upgrade to Kali 2024.4 , this was not possible before the fix. But there are issues running Java 21 SDK. I tried to do an upgrade with: sudo apt dist-upgrade

And it get these Java related errors:

Setting up network-manager-gnome (1.36.0-3) ...
Setting up python3-pyqtgraph (0.13.7-5) ...
Setting up yelp (42.2-1+b3) ...
Setting up cherrytree (1.1.2+dfsg-1+b2) ...
Setting up kali-system-gui (2025.1.1) ...
Setting up kali-desktop-xfce (2025.1.1) ...
Processing triggers for ca-certificates-java (20240118) ...
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# SIGILL (0x4) at pc=0x0000ffff73d40c5c, pid=90331, tid=90332
#
# JRE version: (21.0.5+11) (build )
# Java VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (21.0.5+11-Debian-1, mixed mode, sharing, tiered, compressed oops, compressed class ptrs, g1 gc, linux-aarch64)
# Problematic frame:
# j java.lang.System.registerNatives()V+0 java.base@21.0.5
#
# No core dump will be written. Core dumps have been disabled. To enable core dumping, try "ulimit -c unlimited" before starting Java again
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# //hs_err_pid90331.log
[0.033s][warning][os] Loading hsdis library failed
#
# The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code.
# See problematic frame for where to report the bug.
#
Unable to execute Java. Skipping Java certificates setup.
Setting up default-jre-headless (2:1.21-76) ...
Setting up openjdk-17-jre:arm64 (17.0.13+11-2) ...
Setting up openjdk-21-jre:arm64 (21.0.5+11-1) ...
Setting up default-jre (2:1.21-76) ...
Setting up patator (1.0-4) ...
Setting up kali-linux-headless (2025.1.1) ...
Setting up kali-linux-default (2025.1.1) ...
Processing triggers for dictionaries-common (1.30.2) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.145) ...


When I try this after the installation:
└─$ java -version
Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on -Dswing.aatext=true
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# SIGILL (0x4) at pc=0x0000ffff8bd40c5c, pid=2045, tid=2046
#
# JRE version: (21.0.5+11) (build )