How to create a Fedora VM on a mac machine using vfkit

• See documentation: https://github.com/crc-org/vfkit
• For butane tool: https://coreos.github.io/butane/

How to guide

Download a Fedora CoreOS AppleHV image (example: https://builds.coreos.fedoraproject.org/prod/streams/stable/builds/41.20241215.3.0/aarch64/fedora-coreos-41.20241215.3.0-applehv.aarch64.raw.gz) and extract it locally.

Change the mac address (the one of your eth or bridge interface) to configure the network interface to access it from your machine and update the bash script to use yours and point to a local temp folder where log, ignition or butane config files will be stored

Create a butane yaml config file to define a user, its password and import your public key (to ssh). See hereafter what you should do !

cat <<EOF > dev/my-cfg.bu
variant: fcos
version: 1.1.0
passwd:
  users:
    - name: user1
      # 
      # Get your Public key and append it to the following field
      #
      ssh_authorized_keys:
      - <<ADD_HERE THE CONTENT OF YOUR PUBLIC KEY STRING>>
      #
      # Generate the hash password using this command: podman run -ti --rm quay.io/coreos/mkpasswd --method=yescrypt
      #
      password_hash: <<GENERATED_PASSWORD>>
      home_dir: /home/user1
      no_create_home: false
      groups:
        - wheel
        - sudo
      shell: /bin/bash
EOF

and convert it to an ignition json file using butane tool

export CFG_FOLDER=/Users/cmoullia/code/_temp/vfkit/dev

podman run --rm \
  -v $CFG_FOLDER/:/files \
  quay.io/coreos/butane:release \
  --pretty \
  --strict \
  /files/my-cfg.bu > transpiled_config.ign
cp transpiled_config.ign $CFG_FOLDER/my-cfg.ign  

Create now the VM

export IMG=fedora-coreos-41.20241215.3.0-applehv.aarch64.raw

vfkit \
--cpus 2 \
--memory 2048 \
--log-level debug \
--ignition $CFG_FOLDER/my-cfg.ign \
--bootloader efi,variable-store=$CFG_FOLDER/efi-variable-store,create \
--device virtio-blk,path=$IMG \
--device virtio-input,keyboard \
--device virtio-input,pointing \
--device virtio-net,nat,mac=<<YOUr_MAC_ADDRESS>> \
--device rosetta,mountTag=rosetta,install \
--restful-uri tcp://localhost:60195 \
--device virtio-rng \
--device virtio-vsock,port=1025,socketURL=$CFG_FOLDER/default.sock,listen \
--device virtio-serial,logFilePath=$CFG_FOLDER/default.log \
--device virtio-gpu,width=800,height=600 \
--gui

To ssh, get the IP address of the VM from the GUI screen and pass the path of your private key

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa [email protected]
Fedora CoreOS 41.20241215.3.0
Tracker: https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker
Discuss: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/coreos

Last login: Fri Jan 10 13:14:45 2025 from 192.168.64.1
user1@localhost:~$ 

You can mount different folders as documented here: https://github.com/crc-org/vfkit/blob/main/doc/usage.md#file-sharing Add a new line to your config

--device virtio-fs,sharedDir=<<YOUR_PATH>>,mountTag=<<MOUNT_NAME>> \

and ssh to mount the dir

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa [email protected]
user1@localhost:~$ pwd
/home/user1

mkdir /home/user1/dir
sudo mount -t virtiofs <<MOUNT_NAME>> /home/user1/<<TARGET_DIR>>
ls -la /home/user1/<<TARGET_DIR>>

gVisor

See project: https://github.com/containers/gvisor-tap-vsock

vfkit --cpus 8 --memory 9536 \
  --bootloader efi,variable-store=/Users/cmoullia/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/applehv/efi-bl-podman-machine-default,create \
  --device virtio-blk,path=/Users/cmoullia/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/applehv/podman-machine-default-arm64.raw \
  --device virtio-rng \
  --device virtio-serial,logFilePath=/var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/podman-machine-default.log \
  --device rosetta,mountTag=rosetta,install \
  --device virtio-vsock,port=1025,socketURL=/var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/podman-machine-default.sock,listen \
  --device virtio-net,unixSocketPath=/var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/podman-machine-default-gvproxy.sock,mac=5a:94:ef:e4:0c:ee \
  --device virtio-fs,sharedDir=/Users,mountTag=a2a0ee2c717462feb1de2f5afd59de5fd2d8 \
  --device virtio-fs,sharedDir=/private,mountTag=71708eb255bc230cd7c91dd26f7667a7b938 \
  --device virtio-fs,sharedDir=/var/folders,mountTag=a0bb3a2c8b0b02ba5958b0576f0d6530e104 \
  --restful-uri tcp://localhost:60194 \
  --device virtio-gpu,width=800,height=600 \
  --device virtio-input,pointing \
  --device virtio-input,keyboard \
  --gui

/opt/podman/bin/gvproxy -debug -mtu 1500 -ssh-port 60188 \
  -listen-vfkit unixgram:///var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/podman-machine-default-gvproxy.sock \
  -forward-sock /var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/podman-machine-default-api.sock \
  -forward-dest /run/user/501/podman/podman.sock \
  -forward-user core \
  -forward-identity /Users/cmoullia/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/machine \
  -pid-file /var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/gvproxy.pid \
  -log-file /var/folders/28/g86pgjxj0wl1nkd_85c2krjw0000gn/T/podman/gvproxy.log

Do we need such parameters ?

-forward-user user1
-forward-identity /Users/cmoullia/.ssh/id_rsa \

Command tested for vfkit

vfkit parameters
  --device virtio-vsock,port=1025,socketURL=/Users/cmoullia/code/_temp/vfkit/dev/vsock-1025.sock,listen \
  --device virtio-net,unixSocketPath=/Users/cmoullia/code/_temp/vfkit/dev/gvproxy.sock,mac=5a:94:ef:e4:0c:ee \
  
  #-listen vsock://:1025 \
  #-listen unix:///Users/cmoullia/code/_temp/vfkit/dev/vfkit-vsock-1025.sock \
set CONFIG_FOLDER /Users/cmoullia/code/_temp/vfkit/dev
rm $CONFIG_FOLDER/gvproxy.sock
gvproxy -debug -mtu 1500 -ssh-port 60188 \
  -listen-vfkit unixgram://$CONFIG_FOLDER/gvproxy.sock \
  -pid-file $CONFIG_FOLDER/gvproxy.pid \
  -log-file $CONFIG_FOLDER/gvproxy.log

To ssh

ssh -i /Users/cmoullia/.ssh/id_rsa -p 60188 \
  -o IdentitiesOnly=yes \
  -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no \
  -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null \
  -o CheckHostIP=no \
  user1@localhost

Remarks

We can try to create a VM using another raw images like fedora cloud but then it is needed to check what they accept: cloud-init vs ignition

Type	Config mode	Testing
Fedora Cloud	cloud-init
Fedora CoreOS	ignition	fedora-coreos-41.20241215.3.0-applehv.aarch64.raw
Fedora Server	?	Must be configured when we create the VM the first time