should be faster than full VM for compiling, but might not work for testing /proc/self pointing at wrong image? also ALSA still not work if called under qemu-user, last I checked) https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation Installing packages The binfmt-support package contains a helper script to easily register/unregister binary formats with the kernel using the binfmt_misc module. Install qemu, binfmt-support, and qemu-user-static: # apt install qemu binfmt-support qemu-user-static Check whether the binfmt entries were successfully registered: # update-binfmts --display This command should print entries for each supported target user emulator, except for the host system. === see appendix if you already have chroot folder with arm system or try to use Raspbian's one from https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi/qemu-user-static a bit involved when it comes to image resizing... === Note: If the host system is Debian Buster and the chroot will be Debian Bullseye, it is good to make sure the host has the version 5.2 of qemu-user-static, available from buster-backports. Otherwise some binaries may cause qemu-user-static to Seg Fault, see 987497. For example setting locale(s) in chroot fails without the upgrade of qemu-user-static. {..} sudo losetup -f -P --show 2020-08-20-raspios-buster-arm64.img Mounting the image Mount the image with root permissions: sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 -o rw /mnt Optional: If you want to mount the RaspiOS /boot sudo mount /dev/loop0p1 -o rw /mnt/boot Also mount necessary host directories. cd /mnt sudo mount --bind /dev dev/ sudo mount --bind /sys sys/ sudo mount --bind /proc proc/ sudo mount --bind /dev/pts dev/pts (not necessary/advised if you use systemd-nspawn) To get everything work (e.g., network) you need to comment out everything in /mnt/etc/ld.so.preload before you chroot in. Take care of that now! (not sure if copying qemu binary into chroot still needed on latest Debian?) cp /usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static /mnt/usr/bin or qemu-arm-static for armhf Now chroot in! cd /mnt (not needed if we already in mnt?) sudo chroot . bin/bash now you can try to get git sources and install usual deps for Cin-gg compilation from inside arm/aarch64 chroot and see how far it comes! ===