macos-virt 0.1.1

MacOS utility to run Linux using Virtualization.Framework

Macos-Virt

A utility to get up and running with MacOS's Virtualization.Framework in 5 minutes.

Installation

You need python3 installed, either install it via Brew or Command Line Tools

pip install macos-virt

Or within a virtualenv to be cleaner:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install macos-virt

Prerequisites

• macOS Monterey (12.3+)
• Intel or Arm Mac.

:warning: This package contains a swift binary called macos-virt-runner. It is not signed. An attempt is made to sign it using your Mac's inbuilt cert, if this causes you any problems open an issue.

:warning: This is alpha software. Please don't run your production DB on this.

Features

• Quickstart seamless setup, 5 minutes until your VM is ready to use.
• Any prerequisite kernels/initrds/root filesystems are downloaded automatically.
• Selection of VM profiles (all based on ubuntu for now)
• Ability to copy files to/from the VM
• Uses latest kernel in your VM to boot - Kernel updates are applied.
• Wake from Suspend notification to keep VM time in sync
• Mount Host directories to the VM using sshfs (Native Virtualization.Framework implementation seems unreliable)
• Shell Completion
• Less than 1MB in size (slightly more with dependencies)

What it doesn't do

• MacOS guests
• Memory Ballooning
• VM Suspend/Resume
• Any Graphical Desktops

Usage

Usage: macos-virt [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --install-completion [bash|zsh|fish|powershell|pwsh]
                                  Install completion for the specified shell.
  --show-completion [bash|zsh|fish|powershell|pwsh]
                                  Show completion for the specified shell, to
                                  copy it or customize the installation.
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  cp        Copy a file to/from a running VM, macos-virt cp default...
  create    Create a new VM
  ls        List all VMs
  mount     Mount a local directory into the VM
  profiles  Describe profiles that are available
  rm        Delete a stopped VM
  shell     Access a shell to a running VM
  start     Start an already created VM
  status    Get high level status of a running VM
  stop      Stop a running VM
  umount    Unmount a directory in the VM
  update    Update memory or CPU on a stopped VM
  version   Show Version information

Quickstart

(venv) ➜  macos-virt git:(main) ✗ macos-virt create --name=default --profile=ubuntu-20.04
Creating Boot image... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:00:00
Expanding Root Image... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:00:00
🥚 VM has been created
🐣 VM has made first contact
🐥 Initialization complete
Uptime                                  66 seconds
CPU Count                               1
CPU Usage                               53.3%
Process Count                           101
Memory Usage                            17.9%
Root Filesystem Usage                   37.5%
Network Addresses                       [['192.168.64.31', '255.255.255.0']]
(venv) ➜  macos-virt git:(main) ✗ macos-virt shell default
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.64.31' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-100-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Thu Mar 24 16:11:25 UTC 2022

  System load:             0.63
  Usage of /:              37.6% of 4.70GB
  Memory usage:            15%
  Swap usage:              0%
  Processes:               108
  Users logged in:         0
  IPv4 address for enp0s1: 192.168.64.31
  IPv6 address for enp0s1: fd32:490d:5ffc:3690:5054:ff:fe6d:5522

0 updates can be applied immediately.


*** System restart required ***

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

macos-virt@ubuntu:~$ sudo poweroff
macos-virt git:(main) ✗ macos-virt start default
💾 Booting with Kernel vmlinuz-5.4.0-105-generic and Ramdisk initrd.img-5.4.0-105-generic from Boot volume
/Users/dmarkey/src/macos-virt/macos_virt/macos_virt_runner/macos_virt_runner: replacing existing signature
🥚 VM has been created
🐣 VM has made first contact
🐥 Initialization complete
Uptime                                  12 seconds
CPU Count                               1
CPU Usage                               89.6%
Process Count                           95
Memory Usage                            15.4%
Root Filesystem Usage                   37.6%
Network Addresses                       [['192.168.64.31', '255.255.255.0']]
(venv) ➜  macos-virt git:(main) ✗ macos-virt shell default
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-105-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Thu Mar 24 16:13:18 UTC 2022

  System load:             0.57
  Usage of /:              37.5% of 4.70GB
  Memory usage:            10%
  Swap usage:              0%
  Processes:               100
  Users logged in:         0
  IPv4 address for enp0s1: 192.168.64.31
  IPv6 address for enp0s1: fd32:490d:5ffc:3690:5054:ff:fe6d:5522


0 updates can be applied immediately.


Last login: Thu Mar 24 16:11:26 2022 from 192.168.64.1
macos-virt@ubuntu:~$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 5.4.0-105-generic #119-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 7 18:49:24 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Profiles

Profile Name	Description
ubuntu-20.04(default)	Ubuntu 20.04 Server Cloud Image
ubuntu-21.04	Ubuntu 21.04 Server Cloud Image
ubuntu-21.10	Ubuntu 21.10 Server Cloud Image
ubuntu-20.04-k3s	Ubuntu 20.04 Server Cloud Image with K3S and Docker (Qemu emulation included)

References

vmcli The Swift part of this system is based on vmcli, thanks it wouldnt exist without you.