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Quick Start

Try running a Tart VM on your Apple Silicon device running macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later (will download a 25 GB image):

brew install cirruslabs/cli/tart
tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-sonoma-base:latest sonoma-base
tart run sonoma-base
Manual installation from a release archive

It's also possible to manually install tart binary from the latest released archive:

curl -LO https://github.com/cirruslabs/tart/releases/latest/download/tart.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tart.tar.gz
./tart.app/Contents/MacOS/tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-sonoma-base:latest sonoma-base
./tart.app/Contents/MacOS/tart run sonoma-base

Please note that ./tart.app/Contents/MacOS/tart binary is required to be used in order to trick macOS to pick tart.app/Contents/embedded.provisionprofile for elevated privileges that Tart needs.

VM images

The following macOS images are currently available:

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma)
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-sonoma-vanilla:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-sonoma-base:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-sonoma-xcode:latest
  • macOS 13 (Ventura)
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-ventura-vanilla:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-ventura-base:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-ventura-xcode:latest
  • macOS 12 (Monterey)
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-monterey-vanilla:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-monterey-base:latest
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-monterey-xcode:latest

There's also a full list of images in which you can discovery specific tags (e.g. ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-monterey-xcode:15) and macOS-specific Packer templates that were used to generate these images.

For, Linux the options are as follows:

  • Ubuntu
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu:latest
  • Debian
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/debian:latest
  • Fedora
    • ghcr.io/cirruslabs/fedora:latest

These Linux images can be ran natively on Vetu, our virtualization solution for Linux, assuming that Vetu itself is running on an arm64 machine.

Similarly to macOS, there's also a full list of images in which you can discovery specific tags (e.g. ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu:22.04) and Linux-specific Packer templates that were used to generate these images.

SSH access

If the guest VM is running and configured to accept incoming SSH connections you can conveniently connect to it like so:

ssh admin@$(tart ip sonoma-base)

Running scripts inside Tart virtual machines

We recommend using Cirrus CLI to run scripts and/or retrieve artifacts from within Tart virtual machines. Alternatively, you can use plain ssh connection and tart ip command:

brew install cirruslabs/cli/sshpass
sshpass -p admin ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" admin@$(tart ip sonoma-base) "uname -a"
sshpass -p admin ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" admin@$(tart ip sonoma-base) < script.sh

Mounting directories

To mount a directory, run the VM with the --dir argument:

tart run --dir=project:~/src/project vm

Here, the project specifies a mount name, whereas the ~/src/project is a path to the host's directory to expose to the VM.

It is also possible to mount directories in read-only mode by adding a third parameter, ro:

tart run --dir=project:~/src/project:ro vm

To mount multiple directories, repeat the --dir argument for each directory:

tart run --dir=www1:~/project1/www --dir=www2:~/project2/www

Note that the first parameter in each --dir argument must be unique, otherwise only the last --dir argument using that name will be used.

Note: to use the directory mounting feature, the host needs to run macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or newer.

Accessing mounted directories in macOS guests

All shared directories are automatically mounted to /Volumes/My Shared Files directory.

The directory we've mounted above will be accessible from the /Volumes/My Shared Files/project path inside a guest VM.

Note: to use the directory mounting feature, the guest VM needs to run macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or newer.

Changing mount location

It is possible to remount the directories after a virtual machine is started by running the following commands:

sudo umount "/Volumes/My Shared Files"
mkdir ~/workspace
mount_virtiofs com.apple.virtio-fs.automount ~/workspace

After running the above commands the direcory will be available at ~/workspace/project

Accessing mounted directories in Linux guests

To be able to access the shared directories from the Linux guest, you need to manually mount the virtual filesystem first:

mount -t virtiofs com.apple.virtio-fs.automount /mnt/shared

The directory we've mounted above will be accessible from the /mnt/shared/project path inside a guest VM.