Creating a Lima instance for container workloads with Podman Desktop
To use the Lima provider you need a Lima instance running a Linux virtual machine.
In the future, Podman Desktop might be able to create Lima instances.
Consider creating a custom Lima instance to:
- Control the assigned resources: CPUs, memory, and disk size.
- Use the rootful connection by default, for example to run Kind.
Prerequisites
The
limactl
executable is installed. See Installing Lima.$ brew install lima
Procedure
In a terminal, create the Lima instance.
To create a Lima instance with rootless Podman, use the
podman
template:$ limactl start --name=podman template://podman
To create a Lima instance with rootful Podman, use the
podman-rootful
template:$ limactl start --name=podman template://podman-rootful
To create an Lima instance with rootless Docker, use the
docker
template:$ limactl start --name=docker template://docker
To create an Lima instance with rootful Docker, use the
docker-rootful
template:$ limactl start --name=docker template://docker-rootful
To select the number of CPUs, the memory, and the disk size, add the options to the
limactl start
command:--cpus=2 --memory=2 --disk=50
Wait for the instance to start, and restart the Lima extension.
Go to Settings > Preferences > Extension: Lima, to change the instance name and type.
Podman (default)
- Type: podman
- Name: podman
Docker
- Type: docker
- Name: docker
Go to Settings > Extensions > Lima, to disable and enable the extension after changes.
Verification
To verify the connection to a running "podman" instance:
$ podman.lima version
To verify the connection to a running "docker" instance:
$ docker.lima version