brew services start doesn't start colima

[lfuelling]

Description

The output of brew install colima outputs the following:

To start colima now and restart at login:
  brew services start colima

Because of this, I'd expect that brew services start colima would start colima, but it doesn't seem to do so.

Version

colima version 0.6.7
git commit: ba1be00
limactl version 0.19.1
qemu-img version 8.2.0

Operating System

• macOS Intel <= 13 (Ventura)
• macOS Intel >= 14 (Sonoma)
• Apple Silicon <= 13 (Ventura)
• Apple Silicon >= 14 (Sonoma)
• Linux

Output of colima status

FATA[0000] colima is not running

Reproduction Steps

1. Run brew install colima

[...]
To start colima now and restart at login:
  brew services start colima
[...]

2. Run brew services start colima

[...]
==> Successfully started `colima` (label: homebrew.mxcl.colima)

3. Run colima status

FATA[0000] colima is not running

Expected behaviour

Colima should be started after the Successfully started colima message.

Additional context

No response

[larafonse]

Seeing this issue on M3 laptop

[n8eloy]

It could take longer (around 20 seconds) than brew's Successfully started ... output for Colima to actually start

The command may also be failing to change the Docker context to Colima

You can see the available contexts with:

docker context ls

So after starting Colima with brew services start colima and after the colima context shows up, try running:

docker context use colima

[francois-beauchemin]

Had a similar issue .
Check the logs at /opt/homebrew/var/log/colima.log

My error was that it did not found docker
For some reason i needed to run brew link docker then the brew services worked

[mpereira]

@francois-beauchemin I just had to do the same, thanks for reporting!

[Vince-Smith]

Check the logs at /opt/homebrew/var/log/colima.log

Thanks, same issue here 🎉

Some More Details For Anyone Else

$ brew services list

Name    Status     User          File
colima  error  256 My.User ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plist

Checking the logs I see that it cannot find docker.

time="2024-10-04T10:26:08-04:00" level=info msg="starting colima"
time="2024-10-04T10:26:08-04:00" level=info msg="runtime: docker"
time="2024-10-04T10:26:08-04:00" level=fatal msg="dependency check failed for docker: docker not found, run 'brew install docker' to install"

$ which docker
/Users/My.User/.rd/bin/docker

Not sure why I do have docker installed but it's from a previous installation of rancher. Not entirely sure why colima didn't find it in my PATH though.

I suspect that the std_service_path defined in homebrew might not be the same as my current path 🤔

[sxalexander]

After also seeing that colima complained of being unable to find docker:

$ which docker
/usr/local/bin/docker

I checked the plist:

# ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plis
...
	<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
	<dict>
		<key>PATH</key>
		<string>/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin</string>
	</dict>
...

Oh ! So, I edited the plist to add /usr/local/bin:

# ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plist
...
	<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
	<dict>
		<key>PATH</key>
		<string>/usr/local/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin</string>
	</dict>
...

🚨 Shockingly, colima still failed after every restart. Then I realized that homebrew regenerated the plist from a template on each restart.

✅ After applying the PATH change directly to the plist template (/opt/homebrew/opt/colima/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plist for me), brew services start colima succeeded.

[cal-smith]

I also hit this issue - removing Rancher Desktop and updating the plist got it working for me, however my homebrew had also gotten into a weird state with launchctl so I was getting:

Error: Failure while executing; `/bin/launchctl bootstrap gui/501 /Users/cal/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plist` exited with 5.

Running

$ launchctl bootout gui/501 /Users/cal/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.colima.plist
$ brew services start colima

Gave me a successful start!

[lferro9000]

For me the fix was to do:

docker context ls

NAME            DESCRIPTION                               DOCKER ENDPOINT                                  ERROR
colima *        colima                                    unix:///Users/username/.colima/default/docker.sock   
default         Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration   unix:///var/run/docker.sock                      
desktop-linux   Docker Desktop                            unix:///Users/username/.docker/run/docker.sock       

And then:
docker context remove desktop-linux

Then the service would respond correctly, and the docker command worked correctly with colima.

Note: Also forced removal of the /Users/username/.docker/run/docker.sock file.