CoreOS over macOS made simple
| read this first |
|---|
| - You must be running macOS Yosemite, 10.10.3, or later on a 2010, or later, Macintosh (i.e. one with a CPU that supports EPT) for everything to work. |
- Starting with 0.7.18 the bundled qcow-tool helper has a runtime dependency in libev. Until we sort out how to build it statically, you need to make it available in the local system - if you are using homebrew that is as easy as brew install libev. |
- If you are still using any version of VirtualBox older than 4.3.30 then corectl will crash your system either if VirtualBox is running, or had been run previously after the last reboot (see xhyve's issues #5 and #9 for the full context). So, if for some reason, you are unable to update VirtualBox to the latest, either of the 4.x or 5.x streams, and were using it in your current session please make sure to restart your Mac before attempting to run corectl. |
- If you are using some sort of desktop firewall in your macOS host (ESET, Little Snitch, whatever) please make sure that it allows traffic from/to the bridge100 interface to the host as otherwise no VM will ever able to succefully boot (as it can't fetch the ignition configs, etc from the host's running corectld) |
step by step instructions
install corectl
installing a release build (prefered for end users)
via homebrew
❯❯❯ brew install corectl
downloading from GitHub
just go to our releases
page and download the tarball with the binaries to your system, and then
unpack its' contents placing them somewhere in some directory in your
${PATH} (/usr/local/bin/ is usually a good choice)
build it locally (for power users)
❯❯❯ mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/genevera/
❯❯❯ cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/genevera/
❯❯❯ git clone [email protected]:genevera/corectl.git
❯❯❯ cd corectl
❯❯❯ make
the built binaries will then appear inside
${GOPATH}/src/github.com/genevera/corectl/bin
start the corectl server daemon (corectld)
this is a required step starting with corectl's 0.7.0 release
❯❯❯ /usr/local/bin/corectld
kickstart a CoreOS VM
the following command will fetch the
latestCoreOS Alpha image available, if not already available locally, verify its integrity, and then boot it.
❯❯❯ corectl run
In your terminal you will shortly see something like the following...
❯❯❯ corectl run
---> 'B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203' started successfully with address 192.168.64.210 and PID 76202
---> 'B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203' boot logs can be found at '/Users/am/.coreos/running/B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203/log'
---> 'B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203' console can be found at '/Users/am/.coreos/running/B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203/tty'
Accessing the newly created CoreOS instance is just a few more clicks away...
❯❯❯ corectl ssh B4AF19D1-DDEE-4A16-8058-1A7C3579F203
usage (straight from the online help)
corectld
CoreOS over macOS made simple. <http://github.com/genevera/corectl>
Copyright (c) 2015-2016, António Meireles
Usage:
corectld [flags]
corectld [command]
Available Commands:
start Starts corectld
status Shows corectld status
stop Stops corectld
version Shows version information
Flags:
-d, --debug adds additional verbosity, and options, directed at debugging purposes and power users
Use "corectld [command] --help" for more information about a command.
All flags can also be set via upper-case environment variables prefixed with "COREOS_"
For example, "--debug" => "COREOS_DEBUG"
corectl
CoreOS over macOS made simple. <http://github.com/genevera/corectl>
Copyright (c) 2015-2016, António Meireles
Usage:
corectl [flags]
corectl [command]
Available Commands:
kill Halts one or more running CoreOS instances
load Loads CoreOS instances defined in an instrumentation file.
ls Lists the CoreOS images available locally
ps Lists running CoreOS instances
pull Pulls a CoreOS image from upstream
put copy file to inside VM
query Display information about the running CoreOS instances
rm Remove(s) CoreOS image(s) from the local filesystem
run Boots a new CoreOS instance
ssh Attach to or run commands inside a running CoreOS instance
version Shows version information
Flags:
-d, --debug adds additional verbosity, and options, directed at debugging purposes and power users
Use "corectl [command] --help" for more information about a command.
All flags can also be set via upper-case environment variables prefixed with "COREOS_"
For example, "--debug" => "COREOS_DEBUG"
here you can find the full auto-generated documentation.
simple usage recipe: a docker and rkt playground
create a volume to store your persistent data
qcow-tool, that we use below, is shipped together with corectl and creates qcow2 images.Please do note that the
--sizeargument must to be suffixed the right way -KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB/PiB
❯❯❯ qcow-tool create --size=16GiB var_lib_docker.img.qcow2
will become
/var/lib/{docker|rkt}. In this example case we created a QCow2 volume with 16GB.
| a quick note regarding Raw volumes |
|---|
| Raw volumes were the default until version 0.7.12. They are still supported but become a deprecated feature that may disappear some point in the future. |
format and label it
we'll format and label the newly created volume from within a transient VM as it's the simplest way. We're formatting it with
ext4but you can choose any filesystem you like assuming it is a CoreOS supported one.
❯❯❯ corectl run --name foo --volume=var_lib_docker.img.qcow2
❯❯❯ corectl ssh foo "sudo mke2fs -b 1024 -i 1024 -t ext4 -m0 /dev/vda && \
sudo e2label /dev/vda rkthdd "
❯❯❯ corectl halt foo
above, we labeled our volume rkthdd which is the signature that our
recipe expects.
by relying in labels for volume identification we get around the issues we'd have otherwise if we were depending on the actual volume name (/dev/vd...) as those would have to be hardcoded (an issue, if one is mix and matching multiple recipes all dealing with different volumes...)
start your docker and rkt playground.
❯❯❯ UUID=deadbeef-dead-dead-dead-deaddeafbeef \
corectl run --volume absolute_or_relative_path/to/persistent.img \
--cloud_config examples/cloud-init/docker-only-with-persistent-storage.txt \
--cpus 2 --memory 2048 --name containerland
this will start a VM named containerland with the
volume we created previously attached, 2 virtual cores and 2GB of RAM. The
provided cloud-config
will format the given volume (if it wasn't yet) and bind mount both
/var/lib/rkt and /var/lib/docker on top of it. Docker will also become
available through socket activation.
above we passed arguments to the VM both via environment variables and command flags. both ways are fully supported, just use whatever suits your needs better.
now...
❯❯❯ corectl ps
Server:
Version: 0.7.0
Go Version: go1.6.2
Built: Mon Jul 04 10:05:51 WEST 2016
OS/Arch: darwin/amd64
Pid: 76155
Uptime: 37 minutes ago
Activity:
Active VMs: 1
Total Memory: 2048
Total vCores: 2
UUID: A163767A-78DC-41F9-AA66-E57B6C6CAB1A
Name: containerland
Version: 1097.0.0
Channel: alpha
vCPUs: 3
Memory (MB): 2048
Pid: 76807
Uptime: 25 minutes ago
Sees World: true
cloud-config: /Users/am/code/corectl/src/github.com/genevera/corectl/examples/cloud-init/docker-only-with-persistent-storage.txt
Network:
eth0: 192.168.64.2
Volumes:
/dev/vda /Users/am/code/corectl/persistentData/var_lib_docker.img
❯❯❯ docker -H $(corectl q containerland --ip):2375 images -a
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
centos latest 05188b417f30 2 days ago 196.8 MB
busybox latest 2b8fd9751c4c 10 days ago 1.093 MB
fedora latest f9873d530588 13 days ago 204.4 MB
or ...
❯❯❯ corectl ssh containerland
CoreOS stable (1097.0.0)
Last login: Mon Jul 4 09:17:26 2016 from 192.168.64.1
Update Strategy: No Reboots
or ...
❯❯❯ corectl ssh containerland "sudo rkt list"
UUID APP IMAGE NAME STATE CREATED STARTED NETWORKS
All running VMs become reachable by name transparently on the host using macOS' native name resolution machinery
❯❯❯ ping -c 1 containerland PING containerland.coreos.local (192.168.64.2): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.64.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.239 ms --- containerland.coreos.local ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.239/0.239/0.239/0.000 ms
have fun!
Tracing
Thanks to hyperkit (that we consume as
corectld.runner) there are available a number of static DTrace probes to
simplify investigation of performance problems. To list the probes supported by
your version of corectl, type the following command while corectld is running:
$ sudo dtrace -l -P 'hyperkit$target' -p $(pgrep corectld.runner)
Refer to scripts in examples/dtrace/ directory for examples of possible usage
and available probes.
projects using corectl
- Rimas Mocevicius entire toolset of macOS GUI apps is now using corectl underneath, and has become part of the genevera project
acknowledgements
- Michael Steil for releasing into the wild his awesome xhyve lightweight macOS virtualization solution
- Docker Inc for keep improving it through hyperkit.
- Brandon Philips, from CoreOS, who come with the original, bash based, coreos-xhyve prototype that this project supersedes
contributing
corectl is an open source project released under the Apache License, Version 2.0, contributions and sugestions are gladly welcomed!