[πGetting started] [βFAQs & Troubleshooting] [π―π΅ζ₯ζ¬θͺREADME]
Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2), and containerd.
Lima can be considered as a some sort of unofficial "containerd for Mac".
Lima is expected to be used on macOS hosts, but can be used on Linux hosts as well.
β Automatic file sharing
β Automatic port forwarding
β Built-in support for containerd (Other container engines can be used too)
β Intel on Intel
β ARM on Intel
β ARM on ARM
β Intel on ARM
β Various guest Linux distributions: Alpine, Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Rocky, Ubuntu (default), ...
Related project: sshocker (ssh with file sharing and port forwarding)
This project is unrelated to The Lima driver project (driver for ARM Mali GPUs).
The goal of Lima is to promote containerd including nerdctl (contaiNERD ctl) to Mac users, but Lima can be used for non-container applications as well.
Container environments:
- Rancher Desktop: Kubernetes and container management to the desktop
- Colima: Docker (and Kubernetes) on macOS with minimal setup
GUI:
- Lima xbar plugin: xbar plugin to start/stop VMs from the menu bar and see their running status.
- lima-gui: Qt GUI for Lima
- GitHub Discussions
#lima
channel, colocated with#rancher-desktop
channel in Rancher Users Slack (Lima is not a Rancher project)- New account: https://slack.rancher.io/
- Login: https://rancher-users.slack.com/
$ uname -a
Darwin macbook.local 20.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 20.4.0: Thu Apr 22 21:46:47 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.101.2~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
$ lima uname -a
Linux lima-default 5.11.0-16-generic #17-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 14 20:12:43 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ LIMA_INSTANCE=arm lima uname -a
Linux lima-arm 5.11.0-16-generic #17-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 14 20:10:16 UTC 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
See ./docs/multi-arch.md
for Intel-on-ARM and ARM-on-Intel .
$ echo "files under /Users on macOS filesystem are readable from Linux" > some-file
$ lima cat some-file
files under /Users on macOS filesystem are readable from Linux
$ lima sh -c 'echo "/tmp/lima is writable from both macOS and Linux" > /tmp/lima/another-file'
$ cat /tmp/lima/another-file
/tmp/lima is writable from both macOS and Linux
$ lima nerdctl run -d --name nginx -p 127.0.0.1:8080:80 nginx:alpine
You don't need to run "lima nerdctl" everytime, instead you can use special shortcut called "nerdctl.lima" to do the same thing. By default, it'll be installed along with the lima, so, you don't need to do anything extra. There will be a symlink called nerdctl pointing to nerdctl.lima. This is only created when there is no nerdctl entry in the directory already though. It worths to mention that this is created only via make install. Not included in Homebrew/MacPorts/nix packages.
http://127.0.0.1:8080 is accessible from both macOS and Linux.
For the usage of containerd and nerdctl (contaiNERD ctl), visit https://github.com/containerd/containerd and https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl.
Homebrew package is available.
brew install lima
Manual installation steps
Install recent version of QEMU. v6.2.0 or later is recommended.
- Download the binary archive of Lima from https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases ,
and extract it under
/usr/local
(or somewhere else). For instance:
brew install jq
VERSION=$(curl -fsSL https://api.github.com/repos/lima-vm/lima/releases/latest | jq -r .tag_name)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases/download/${VERSION}/lima-${VERSION:1}-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m).tar.gz | tar Cxzvm /usr/local
- To install Lima from the source, run
make && make install
.
NOTE Lima is not regularly tested on ARM Mac (due to lack of CI).
[macOS]$ limactl start
...
INFO[0029] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.
[macOS]$ lima uname
Linux
Detailed usage:
-
Run
limactl start <INSTANCE> [--tty=false]
to start the Linux instance. The default instance name is "default". Lima automatically opens an editor (vi
) for reviewing and modifying the configuration. Wait until "READY" to be printed on the host terminal.--tty=false
disables the interactive prompt to open an editor. -
Run
limactl shell <INSTANCE> <COMMAND>
to launch<COMMAND>
on Linux. For the "default" instance, this command can be shortened aslima <COMMAND>
. Thelima
command also accepts the instance name as the environment variable$LIMA_INSTANCE
. -
Run
limactl copy <SOURCE> ... <TARGET>
to copy files between instances, or between instances and the host. Use<INSTANCE>:<FILENAME>
to specify a source or target inside an instance. -
Run
limactl list [--json]
to show the instances. -
Run
limactl stop [--force] <INSTANCE>
to stop the instance. -
Run
limactl delete [--force] <INSTANCE>
to delete the instance. -
Run
limactl edit <INSTANCE>
to edit the instance. -
To enable bash completion, add
source <(limactl completion bash)
to~/.bash_profile
. -
To enable zsh completion, see
limactl completion zsh --help
Lima may have bugs that result in loss of data.
Make sure to back up your data before running Lima.
Especially, the following data might be easily lost:
- Data in the shared writable directories (
/tmp/lima
by default), probably after hibernation of the host machine (e.g., after closing and reopening the laptop lid) - Data in the VM image, mostly when upgrading the version of lima
See ./pkg/limayaml/default.yaml
.
The current default spec:
- OS: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)
- CPU: 4 cores
- Memory: 4 GiB
- Disk: 100 GiB
- Mounts:
~
(read-only),/tmp/lima
(writable) - SSH: 127.0.0.1:60022
- Hypervisor: QEMU with HVF accelerator
- Filesystem sharing: reverse sshfs (likely to be replaced with 9p or Samba in future)
- Port forwarding:
ssh -L
, automated by watching/proc/net/tcp
andiptables
events in the guest
-
Please certify your Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO), by signing off your commit with
git commit -s
and with your real name. -
Please squash commits.
π
- Performance optimization
- More guest distros
- Windows hosts
- VirtFS to replace the current reverse sshfs (work has to be done on QEMU repo)
- vsock to replace SSH (work has to be done on QEMU repo)
Password is disabled and locked by default.
You have to use limactl shell bash
(or lima bash
) to open a shell.
Alternatively, you may also directly ssh into the guest: ssh -p 60022 -i ~/.lima/_config/user -o NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost=yes 127.0.0.1
.
Yes, it should work, but not regularly tested on ARM (due to lack of CI).
Alpine, Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Rocky are also known to work.
See ./examples/
.
An image has to satisfy the following requirements:
- systemd or OpenRC
- cloud-init
- The following binaries to be preinstalled:
sudo
- The following binaries to be preinstalled, or installable via the package manager:
sshfs
newuidmap
andnewgidmap
apt-get
,dnf
,apk
,pacman
, orzypper
(if you want to contribute support for another package manager, rungit grep apt-get
to find out where to modify)
Yes, any container engine should work with Lima.
Container runtime examples:
./examples/docker.yaml
: Docker./examples/podman.yaml
: Podman./examples/singularity.yaml
: Singularity
Container orchestrator examples:
./examples/k3s.yaml
: Kubernetes (k3s)./examples/k8s.yaml
: Kubernetes (kubeadm)./examples/nomad.yaml
: Nomad
The default Ubuntu image also contains LXD. Runlima sudo lxc init
to set up LXD.
See also third party containerd projects based on Lima:
- Rancher Desktop: Kubernetes and container management to the desktop
- Colima: Docker (and Kubernetes) on macOS with minimal setup
Lima itself does not support connecting to a remote Linux machine, but sshocker, the predecessor or Lima, provides similar features for remote Linux machines.
e.g., run sshocker -v /Users/foo:/home/foo/mnt -p 8080:80 <USER>@<HOST>
to expose /Users/foo
to the remote machine as /home/foo/mnt
,
and forward localhost:8080
to the port 80 of the remote machine.
Lima is free software (Apache License 2.0), while Docker for Mac is not. Their EULA even prohibits disclosure of benchmarking result.
On the other hand, Moby, aka Docker for Linux, is free software, but Moby/Docker lacks several novel features of containerd, such as:
- On-demand image pulling (aka lazy-pulling, eStargz)
- Running an encrypted container
- Importing and exporting local OCI archives
If you have installed QEMU v6.0.0 or later on macOS 11 via homebrew, your QEMU binary should have been already automatically signed to enable HVF acceleration.
However, if you see HV_ERROR
, you might need to sign the binary manually.
cat >entitlements.xml <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>com.apple.security.hypervisor</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF
codesign -s - --entitlements entitlements.xml --force /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64
Note: Only on macOS versions before 10.15.7 you might need to add this entitlement in addition:
<key>com.apple.vm.hypervisor</key>
<true/>
- Make sure that HVF is enabled with
com.apple.security.hypervisor
entitlement. See "QEMU crashes withHV_ERROR
". - Emulating non-native machines (ARM-on-Intel, Intel-on-ARM) is slow by design. See
docs/multi-arch.md
for a workaround.
- make sure qemu is codesigned, See "QEMU crashes with
HV_ERROR
". - if you are on macOS 10.15.7 or 11.0 or later make sure the entitlement
com.apple.vm.hypervisor
is not added. It only works on older macOS versions. You can clear the codesigning withcodesign --remove-signature /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64
and start over.
This error is known to happen when running an image of RHEL8-compatible distribution such as Rocky Linux 8.x on Intel Mac.
A workaround is to set environment variable QEMU_SYSTEM_X86_64="qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu Haswell-v4"
.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1838390
Prior to Lima v0.7.0, Lima did not support forwarding privileged ports (1-1023). e.g., you had to use 8080, not 80.
Lima v0.7.0 and later supports forwarding privileged ports on macOS hosts.
On Linux hosts, you might have to set sysctl value net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0
.
libslirp v4.6.0 used by QEMU is known to be broken.
If you have libslirp v4.6.0 in /usr/local/Cellar/libslirp
, you have to upgrade it to v4.6.1 or later (brew upgrade
).
The copy
command only works for instances that have been created by lima 0.5.0 or later. You can manually install the required identity on older instances with (replace INSTANCE
with actual instance name):
< ~/.lima/_config/user.pub limactl shell INSTANCE sh -c 'tee -a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'
The default guest IP 192.168.5.15 is not accessible from the host and other guests.
To add another IP address that is accessible from the host and other virtual machines, enable vde_vmnet
.
See ./docs/network.md
.
- Inspect logs:
limactl --debug start
$HOME/.lima/<INSTANCE>/serial.log
/var/log/cloud-init-output.log
(inside the guest)/var/log/cloud-init.log
(inside the guest)
- Make sure that you aren't mixing up tabs and spaces in the YAML.