Running a VM that persists data on macOS

[moenodedev]

I would like to run a vz/virtiofs alpine VM on macOS that persists installed packages, system configuration files, and dotfiles. Is this possible with alpine-lima or do I need to create my own custom image?

[jandubois]

I've created an alpine-image template in #2360 that uses the Alpine cloud images instead of our alpine-lima ISO, so everything will be persisted in the VM automatically.

All it needed was a small change to make sure sudo is installed, as the cloud images only come with doas.

Please check it out and let us know how it works for you!

[moenodedev]

If I change the mount point back to the original (a mountPoint that was already used) the previous mountPoint is still mounted:

 mounts:
   - location: "~/Lima/development/home"
-    mountPoint: "/home/trojan4"
+    mountPoint: "/home/development"
     writable: true

$ mount | grep ^mount
mount0 on /home/trojan4 type virtiofs (rw,relatime)
mount1 on /tmp/lima type virtiofs (rw,relatime)
mount0 on /home/development type virtiofs (rw,relatime)

The original does get the correct permissions and contents:

$ ls -ld /home/development
drwx------ 11 development development 352 May 25 13:33 /home/development

[moenodedev]

Another stop/start makes the instance forget the previous mount:

$ mount | grep ^mount
mount0 on /home/development type virtiofs (rw,relatime)
mount1 on /tmp/lima type virtiofs (rw,relatime)

[moenodedev]

@jandubois Should I create a bug report for the previous mount path persisting through start/stop cycles or is that a known or unfixable problem?

[jandubois]

Please create an issue for this, so we can track it properly. You can convert the first comment into a separate issue:

But the please copy the additional details from your further comments as well!

[moenodedev]

Thanks I created issue #2370