debugging x86_64 elf on mac silicon

date: Jan 17, 2026

reading time: 2 min read

how to debug x86_64 elf(linux) binaries on mac silicon(m series)

gdbdebugmac

lima

the most straightforward and easiest way is to install a x86_64 linux vm with lima.

install lima

brew install lima qemu

start an x86_64 lima vm with qemu

limactl start --arch=x86_64 --vm-type=qemu

you access the vm with lima

now you can use gdb for example to debug x86_64 binaries on the vm.

running a kali vm with lima

i tried the normal kali iso and the kali vm image from kali.org, but neither worked.

my workaround is to setup a debian vm and install kali tools on it.

create a kali.yaml file with the following content:

kali.yaml

vmType: "qemu"
os: "Linux"
arch: "x86_64"
 
# use debian cloud image as base (more reliable)
images:
  - location: "https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/bookworm/latest/debian-12-generic-amd64.qcow2"
    arch: "x86_64"
 
cpus: 4
memory: "4GiB"
disk: "60GiB"
 
firmware:
  legacyBIOS: false
 
mounts:
  - location: "~"
    writable: true
 
ssh:
  localPort: 0
  loadDotSSHPubKeys: true
 
containerd:
  system: false
  user: false
 
provision:
  - mode: system
    script: |
      #!/bin/bash
      set -eux -o pipefail
      
      export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
      apt update
      apt upgrade -y
      
      apt install -y gnupg2 apt-transport-https
      
      echo "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kali.list
      
      wget -q -O - https://archive.kali.org/archive-key.asc | gpg --dearmor > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/kali-archive-keyring.gpg
      apt update
      
      apt install -y kali-linux-core

access the vm with limactl shell kali

if you want you can install

no gui tools apt install kali-linux-headless
deafult tools apt install kali-linux-default
all of the tools apt install kali-linux-everything
or a category apt install kali-tools-reverse-engineering