vmtype.md

vmType

Lima supports two ways of running guest machines:

• qemu
• vz

QEMU

"qemu" option makes use of QEMU to run guest operating system. This option is used by default if "vmType" is not set.

VZ

Warning "vz" mode is experimental

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 0.14, macOS >= 13.0

"vz" option makes use of native virtualization support provided by macOS Virtualization.Framework.

An example configuration:

# Example to run ubuntu using vmType: vz instead of qemu (Default)
vmType: "vz"
images:
- location: "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/22.04/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img"
  arch: "x86_64"
- location: "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/22.04/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img"
  arch: "aarch64"
mounts:
  - location: "~"
mountType: "virtiofs"

Caveats

• "vz" option is only supported on macOS 13 or above
• Virtualization.framework doesn't support running "intel guest on arm" and vice versa

Known Issues

• "vz" doesn't support legacyBIOS: true option, so guest machine like centos-stream, archlinux, oraclelinux will not work
• When running lima using "vz", ${LIMA_HOME}/<INSTANCE>/serial.log will not contain kernel boot logs