Paths and ports

LimaNix keeps everything outside the VMs in three folders on your Mac, and gives each VM an SSH port on the Mac's own address, 127.0.0.1. Leave the folders to the limanix commands, and read Troubleshooting before you change anything in them by hand.

Folders

Folder	What it holds	Moved with
~/Library/Application Support/Limanix	LimaNix state: the record of each VM, its prepared builds, imported modules and SSH settings	LIMANIX_HOME
~/.lima	Lima's VMs: their guest disks, Lima settings and logs, and the SSH key that limanix uses	LIMA_HOME
~/.limanix	Managed homes: your home folder in each VM	home.root in limanix.toml

WARNING

LIMANIX_HOME and LIMA_HOME do not move existing VMs. Use the same values for every command: other values show other VMs.

The LimaNix state folder

limanix creates it when it first needs it, readable only by your Mac account:

Path	What it holds
instances/NAME/identity.json	What create fixes: the VM's name, ID, architecture, account and managed home
instances/NAME/instance.json	The result of the last operation, the current generation and its error
instances/NAME/generations/	The prepared inputs of each build: the NixOS configuration and the Lima settings. current points to the last one built
modules/	Modules imported with limanix modules add
homes/	Records of the managed homes that limanix delete kept
locks/	Locks that keep two commands from changing the same VM at once
runtime/	Lima's guest agent, unpacked from the limanix binary
ssh/config	SSH settings for editors; see SSH ports

limanix delete removes the VM's folder in instances/ and records its managed home in homes/. With --remove-home, it removes the home and that record too. Install lists what stays on the Mac after you remove LimaNix.

SSH ports

Each VM gets its own SSH port on 127.0.0.1, between 42022 and 49151, below the range that macOS hands out to programs:

• create takes the first port that no other VM uses and no other program holds.
• update keeps the VM's port while it is free, and moves the VM to a free one when another program holds it.
• start keeps the port. When another program holds it, start fails: run limanix update to move the VM.

ssh/config names each VM NAME.limanix, with its port, its account and Lima's key:

ssh/config

Host dev-box.limanix
  HostName 127.0.0.1
  Port 42022
  User dev
  IdentityFile "/Users/you/.lima/_config/user"
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  PreferredAuthentications publickey
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
  LogLevel ERROR

Host keys are not checked for these hosts: a VM that you create again gets a new key on the same local address. limanix rewrites the file after create, update, start and delete, and your changes in it are lost. Include it in ~/.ssh/config with its full path; see Editors and IDEs.