- FAQs
- How does Colima compare to Lima?
- Are M1 macs supported?
- Does Colima support autostart?
- Can config file be used instead of cli flags?
- Docker
- How does Colima compare to minikube, Kind, K3d?
- Is another Distro supported?
- The Virtual Machine's IP is not reachable
- How can disk space be recovered?
- Are Lima overrides supported?
- Troubleshooting
Colima is basically a higher level usage of Lima and utilises Lima to provide Docker, Containerd and/or Kubernetes.
Colima supports and works on both Intel and M1 macs.
Feedbacks would be appreciated.
Since v0.5.6 Colima supports foreground mode via the --foreground flag. i.e. colima start --foreground.
If Colima has been installed using brew, the easiest way to autostart Colima is to use brew services.
brew services start colimaYes, from v0.4.0, Colima support YAML configuration file.
colima start --edit
For manual edit, the config file is located at $HOME/.colima/default/colima.yaml.
For other profiles, $HOME/.colima/<profile-name>/colima.yaml
colima template
For manual edit, the template file is located at $HOME/.colima/_templates/default.yaml.
Set the $EDITOR environment variable or use the --editor flag.
colima start --edit --editor code # one-off config
colima template --editor code # default configYes, from version v0.3.0 Colima leverages Docker contexts and can thereby run alongside Docker for Mac.
Colima makes itself the default Docker context on startup and should work straight away.
Docker socket is located at $HOME/.colima/docker.sock
Docker socket is located at $HOME/.colima/default/docker.sock
It can also be retrieved by checking status
colima status
docker context list
docker context use <context-name>
Colima uses Docker contexts to allow co-existence with other Docker servers and sets itself as the default Docker context on startup.
However, some applications are not aware of Docker contexts and may lead to the error.
This can be fixed by any of the following approaches. Ensure the Docker socket path by checking the socket location.
-
Setting application specific Docker socket path if supported by the application. e.g. JetBrains IDEs.
-
Setting the
DOCKER_HOSTenvironment variable to point to Colima socket.export DOCKER_HOST="unix://${HOME}/.colima/default/docker.sock"
-
Linking the Colima socket to the default socket path. Note that this may break other Docker servers.
sudo ln -sf $HOME/.colima/default/docker.sock /var/run/docker.sock
-
v0.3.4 or lower
On first startup, Colima generates Docker daemon.json file at
$HOME/.colima/docker/daemon.json. Modify the daemon.json file accordingly and restart Colima. -
v0.4.0 or newer
Start Colima with
--editflag.colima start --edit
Add the Docker config to the
dockersection.- docker: {} + docker: + insecure-registries: + - myregistry.com:5000 + - host.docker.internal:5000
buildx can be installed as a Docker plugin
Using homebrew
brew install docker-buildx
# Follow the caveats mentioned in the install instructions:
# mkdir -p ~/.docker/cli-plugins
# ln -sfn $(which docker-buildx) ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx
docker buildx version # verify installationAlternatively
ARCH=amd64 # change to 'arm64' for m1
VERSION=v0.11.2
curl -LO https://github.com/docker/buildx/releases/download/${VERSION}/buildx-${VERSION}.darwin-${ARCH}
mkdir -p ~/.docker/cli-plugins
mv buildx-${VERSION}.darwin-${ARCH} ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx
chmod +x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx
docker buildx version # verify installationYes, you can create a Kubernetes cluster with minikube (with Docker driver), Kind or K3d instead of enabling Kubernetes in Colima.
Those are better options if you need multiple clusters, or do not need Docker and Kubernetes to share the same images and runtime.
Colima with Docker runtime is fully compatible with Minikube (with Docker driver), Kind and K3d.
Minikube with Docker runtime can expose the cluster's Docker with minikube docker-env. But there are some caveats.
-
Kubernetes is not optional, even if you only need Docker.
-
All of minikube's free drivers for macOS fall-short in one of performance, port forwarding or volumes. While port-forwarding and volumes are non-issue for Kubernetes, they can be a deal breaker for Docker-only use.
Colima uses a lightweight Alpine image with bundled dependencies. Therefore, user interaction with the Virtual Machine is expected to be minimal (if any).
However, Colima optionally provides Ubuntu container as a layer.
-
CLI
colima start --layer=true -
Config
- layer: false + layer: true
When the layer is enabled, the underlying Virtual Machine is abstracted and both the ssh and ssh-config commands routes to the layer.
The underlying Virtual Machine is still accessible by specifying --layer=false to the ssh and ssh-config commands, or by running colima in the SSH session.
Colima uses Ubuntu as the underlying image. Other distros are not supported.
Reachable IP address is not enabled by default due to root privilege and slower startup time.
NOTE: this is only supported on macOS
- CLI
colima start --network-address - Config
network: - address: false + address: true
Disk space can be freed in the VM by removing containers or running docker system prune.
However, it will not reflect on the host on Colima versions v0.4.x or lower.
For Colima v0.5.0 and above, unused disk space in the VM is released on startup. A restart would suffice.
For Colima v0.5.0 and above, user can manually recover the disk space by running sudo fstrim -a in the VM.
# '-v' may be added for verbose output
colima ssh -- sudo fstrim -aYes, however this should only be done by advanced users.
Overriding the image is not supported as Colima's image includes bundled dependencies that would be missing in the user specified image.
These are some common issues reported by users and how to troubleshoot them.
There are multiple reasons that could cause Colima to fail to start.
This is the case when the output of colima list shows a broken status. This can happen due to macOS restart.
colima list
PROFILE STATUS ARCH CPUS MEMORY DISK RUNTIME ADDRESS
default Broken aarch64 2 2GiB 60GiB
This can be fixed by forcefully stopping Colima. The state will be changed to Stopped and it should start up normally afterwards.
colima stop --force
This indicates that a fatal error is preventing Colima from starting, you can enable the debug log with --verbose flag to get more info.
If the log output includes exiting, status={Running:false Degraded:false Exiting:true Errors:[] SSHLocalPort:0} then it is most certainly due to one of the following.
- Running on a device without virtualization support.
- Running an x86_64 version of homebrew (and Colima) on an M1 device.
The recommended way to troubleshoot after an upgrade is to test with a separate profile.
# start with a profile named 'debug'
colima start debugIf the separate profile starts successfully without issues, then the issue would be resolved by resetting the default profile.
colima delete
colima start
Failure for Colima to access the internet is usually down to DNS.
Try custom DNS server(s)
colima start --dns 8.8.8.8 --dns 1.1.1.1Ping an internet address from within the VM to ascertain
colima ssh -- ping -c4 google.com
PING google.com (216.58.223.238): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.58.223.238: seq=0 ttl=42 time=0.082 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.223.238: seq=1 ttl=42 time=0.557 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.223.238: seq=2 ttl=42 time=0.465 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.223.238: seq=3 ttl=42 time=0.457 ms
--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.082/0.390/0.557 ms
Recent versions of Buildkit may show the following error.
runc run failed: unable to start container process: error during container init: error mounting "cgroup" to rootfs at "/sys/fs/cgroup": mount cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup/openrc (via /proc/self/fd/6), flags: 0xf, data: openrc: invalid argumentFrom v0.5.6, start Colima with --cgroups-v2 flag as a workaround.
This is fixed in v0.6.0.