dlite

README

#DLite

The simplest way to use Docker on OSX.

##Thanks

DLite leverages xhyve through the libxhyve Go bindings for virtualization. Without these projects and the people behind them, this project wouldn't exist.

Installation

There are several ways to install dlite. You may install it with Homebrew, download it from github or compile it yourself.

Download

1. Download the latest binary from the releases page and put it somewhere in your path, or

2. Install it with homebrew: brew install dlite

3. If you have a working Go development environment you can build dlite from source by running:

   go get github.com/nlf/dlite
   

   After that you need to compile it (run make dlite in the src/github.com/nlf/dlite dir.)

Initialization

To create the necessary files and a launchd agent which manages the process, simply run

sudo dlite install

See the output of sudo dlite install --help for additional options, like changing number of CPUs, Disk Size, et cetera.

After you've installed, you need to start the process:

dlite start

DLite will start automatically upon logging in as well.

##Updating DLite

The DLite app itself can be updated by running dlite stop, installing the updated binary, and then running dlite start.

To install the updated binary with Homebrew simply run brew upgrade dlite.

If you update dlite, you probably want to update your VM as well:

##Updating your VM

It's possible to update your virtual machine without having to rebuild it entirely. To do so, run the following commands

dlite stop
dlite update
dlite start

##Usage

Just use Docker. DLite creates a /var/run/docker.sock in your host operating system.

When opening ports in your docker containers, connect to local.docker instead of localhost. Everything else should just work™

Note that the local.docker hostname is configurable by passing the -n flag to the install command, as in sudo dlite install -n docker.dev

If you need to SSH to the VM for whatever reason, ssh docker@local.docker should do the trick.

##Troubleshooting

A common cause of the virtual machine failing to start is conflicting entries in your /etc/exports file. Edit the file and see if any other process has an export that conflicts with the one DLite added (it will have comments before and after it, making it easy to identify). If they do, remove the conflicting entry and try starting the service again. Note that dlite adds its export when it is started, not when it is installed, so make sure to either clean your exports file or specify a shared directory that doesn't conflict with existing shares when you install.

If docker cli commands hang, there's a good chance that you have a stale entry in your /etc/hosts file. Run dlite stop, then use sudo to edit your /etc/hosts file and remove any entries that end with # added by dlite. Save the hosts file and run dlite start and try again.

Note that launchctl commands appear to not work correctly when run inside tmux. If you are a tmux user and are having problems, try starting the service outside of your tmux session.

##Caveats

DLite depends on xhyve which only works on OSX versions 10.10 (Yosemite) or newer. You also need a fairly recent mac. You can tell if your computer is new enough by running sysctl kern.hv_support in a terminal. If you see kern.hv_support: 1 as a response, you're good to go. If not, unfortunately your computer is too old to leverage the hypervisor framework and DLite won't work for you.

Xhyve, and therefore DLite, does not support sparse disk images. This means that when you create a virtual machine with DLite the full size of the image must be allocated up front. There is ongoing work to support sparse images in xhyve, and once that support lands DLite will be able to take advantage of it. See xhyve#80, xhyve#82, and xhyve-xyz/xhyve#1 for more information.

DLite is not secured via TLS. If that's important to you for local development, look elsewhere.

DLite is most definitely not recommended for any kind of production use.