cleafy/sxkdvm repository overview

(Research project)

⁠OSX Docker KVM

Run an OSX KVM virtual machine inside a Docker container.

This project permits to run an OSX virtual machine (KVM) inside a Docker container.

⁠Run the Image

To execute the container, you need a working mac_hdd-backing.img. You can obtain one with OSX-KVM project⁠. After that, you can mount the backing storage with the Docker command line and pass the KVM device.

docker run --device /dev/kvm:/dev/kvm -v $PWD/backing:/backing -p 2222:2222 -p 5900:5900 -p 5800:5800 cleafy/sxkdvm

To persist the changes export the snapshot storage somewhere with -v $PWD/snapshot:/snapshot.

⁠Exposed Ports

This VM exposes an ssh connection at 2222 and a VNC server at 5900,5800 ports.

It is possible to access the VM with the following command:

ssh appleuser@localhost -p 2222

⁠Performance Considerations

The environment uses automatic copy-on-write⁠ images to provide seamless integration with Docker layered file system⁠. The mechanism mentioned above permits to obtain acceptable performance when running multiple VMs without hogging the storage.

Furthermore, this container uses hardware virtualization technologies, like VT-X or AMD-V, to achieve almost native performance.