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Managing Virtual Machine

Creating from scratch

Tart supports macOS and Linux virtual machines. All commands like run and pull work the same way regarding of the underlying OS a particular VM image has. The only difference is how such VM images are created. Please check sections below for macOS and Linux instructions.

Creating a macOS VM image from scratch

Tart can create VMs from *.ipsw files. You can download a specific *.ipsw file here or you can use latest instead of a path to *.ipsw to download the latest available version:

tart create --from-ipsw=latest monterey-vanilla
tart run monterey-vanilla

After the initial booting of the VM you'll need to manually go through the macOS installation process. As a convention we recommend creating an admin user with an admin password. After the regular installation please do some additional modifications in the VM:

Enable Auto-Login. Users & Groups -> Login Options -> Automatic login -> admin.
Allow SSH. Sharing -> Remote Login
Disable Lock Screen. Preferences -> Lock Screen -> disable "Require Password" after 5.
Disable Screen Saver.
Run sudo visudo in Terminal, find %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL add admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL to allow sudo without a password.

Creating a Linux VM image from scratch

Linux VMs are supported on hosts running macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or newer.

# Create a bare VM
tart create --linux ubuntu

# Install Ubuntu
tart run --disk focal-desktop-arm64.iso ubuntu

# Run VM
tart run ubuntu

After the initial setup please make sure your VM can be SSH-ed into by running the following commands inside your VM:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y openssh-server
sudo ufw allow ssh

Configuring a VM

By default, a tart VM uses 2 CPUs and 4 GB of memory with a 1024x768 display. This can be changed with tart set command. Please refer to tart set --help for additional details.

Building with Packer

Please refer to Tart Packer Plugin repository for setup instructions. Here is an example of a template to build monterey-base local image based of a remote image:

packer {
  required_plugins {
    tart = {
      version = ">= 0.5.3"
      source  = "github.com/cirruslabs/tart"
    }
  }
}

source "tart-cli" "tart" {
  vm_base_name = "ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-ventura-base:latest"
  vm_name      = "my-custom-ventura"
  cpu_count    = 4
  memory_gb    = 8
  disk_size_gb = 70
  ssh_password = "admin"
  ssh_timeout  = "120s"
  ssh_username = "admin"
}

build {
  sources = ["source.tart-cli.tart"]

  provisioner "shell" {
    inline = ["echo 'Disabling spotlight indexing...'", "sudo mdutil -a -i off"]
  }

  # more provisioners
}

Here is a repository with Packer templates used to build all the images managed by us.

Working with a Remote OCI Container Registry

For example, let's say you want to push/pull images to a registry hosted at https://acme.io/.

Registry Authorization

First, you need to log in and save credential for acme.io host via tart login command:

tart login acme.io

Credentials are securely stored in Keychain.

In addition, Tart supports Docker credential helpers if defined in ~/.docker/config.json.

Finally, TART_REGISTRY_USERNAME and TART_REGISTRY_PASSWORD environment variables allow to override authorization for all registries which might useful for integrating with your CI's secret management.

Pushing a Local Image

Once credentials are saved for acme.io, run the following command to push a local images remotely with two tags:

tart push my-local-vm-name acme.io/remoteorg/name:latest acme.io/remoteorg/name:v1.0.0

Pulling a Remote Image

You can either pull an image:

tart pull acme.io/remoteorg/name:latest

...or instantiate a VM from a remote image:

tart clone acme.io/remoteorg/name:latest my-local-vm-name

This invocation calls the tart pull implicitly (if the image is not being present) before doing the actual cloning.

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