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Install colima on Mac OS

Colima, a lightweight container runtime helps us to run Docker containers on macOS and Linux. Can consider alternative to Docker Desktop.

Bala Subramani K

• 2 min read
Install colima on Mac OS

Colima - container runtimes on macOS (and Linux)

Introduction

Colima, a lightweight container runtime helps us to run Docker containers on macOS and Linux. Can consider alternative to Docker Desktop.

Colima good on:
Colima is significantly faster than Docker Desktop.
Same as docker desktop, colima also support to run kubernetes cluster on local.
While compare with docker desktop, colima performance is good
colima provide option to fine tune your resource consume

Install Homebrew

$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Paste that in a macOS Terminal or Linux shell prompt.

Install on Mac

$ brew install colima

How to start colima?

$ colima start

Verify

$ colima status

Output

bala@kubelancer $ colima status                              
INFO[0000] colima is running using QEMU                 
INFO[0000] arch: aarch64                                
INFO[0000] runtime: docker                              
INFO[0000] mountType: sshfs                             
INFO[0000] socket: unix:///Users/bala/.colima/default/docker.sock 
bala@kubelancer $

List the instance

$ colima list

Output

bala@kubelancer $ colima list
PROFILE    STATUS     ARCH       CPUS    MEMORY    DISK     RUNTIME    ADDRESS
default    Running    aarch64    4       8GiB      60GiB    docker     
bala@kubelancer $

ssh to the VM

$ colima ssh

Output

bala@kubelancer $ colima ssh 

colima:/Users/bala/workspace/kubelancer/k3d$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                            COMMAND                  CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                             NAMES
9ffdba821b2d   ghcr.io/k3d-io/k3d-tools:5.6.0   "/app/k3d-tools noop"    8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes                                     k3d-k3dcluster-tools
b086b134ac0d   ghcr.io/k3d-io/k3d-proxy:5.6.0   "/bin/sh -c nginx-pr…"   8 minutes ago   Up 7 minutes   80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:53542->6443/tcp   k3d-k3dcluster-serverlb
fb1455e8737c   rancher/k3s:v1.27.4-k3s1         "/bin/k3s agent"         8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes                                     k3d-k3dcluster-agent-1
e085f60ecf53   rancher/k3s:v1.27.4-k3s1         "/bin/k3s agent"         8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes                                     k3d-k3dcluster-agent-0
6e38b4289988   rancher/k3s:v1.27.4-k3s1         "/bin/k3s server --t…"   8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes                                     k3d-k3dcluster-server-0
bala@kubelancer $

Stop colima

$ colima stop