yurt simplifies the setup and management of Linux containers on Windows. It runs LXD in a VirtualBox VM and exposes basic container management commands.
This version of Yurt works only on Windows. MacOS support is on the roadmap.
VirtualBox is required. Install from https://virtualbox.org if you do not already have it.
Only Windows 10 and VirtualBox 6 have been tested at this time.
Although we do not have a release yet, you can test out the current functionality using either pipx or pip. Python 3.6+ is required.
Assuming you have already installed pipx:
$ pipx install git+https://github.com/ckmetto/yurt.git
With pip, a Virtual Environment is recommended. This example uses pipenv to create one:
# Create and activate a Virtual Environment.
$ mkdir try-yurt
$ cd ./try-yurt
$ pipenv --three
$ pipenv shell
# Install yurt.
$ pip install git+https://github.com/ckmetto/yurt.git
Yurt should be available on your PATH after installing using either of these options.
$ yurt --version
You will have to activate the virtual environment each time you need to use yurt in case you went with option 2.
After installation, initialize your instance with:
$ yurt init
This downloads and imports a virtual appliance file and may take a few minutes to complete. We also install a network interface on your host to allow for direct communication with containers. Accept the User Account Control prompt from VirtualBox when it comes up. Initialization will fail if VirtualBox is denied permission.
That's all. You are now ready to launch some containers. At this time we support amd64 images from https://images.linuxcontainers.org/ only. Run yurt images --remote to view them.
$ yurt launch alpine/3.11 c1
$ yurt launch ubuntu/18.04 c2
$ yurt list
Name Status IP Address Image
--------- -------- --------------- -------------------
c1 Running 192.168.132.117 Alpine/3.11 (amd64)
c2 Running 192.168.132.92 Ubuntu/bionic (amd64)
After launching, start a shell in the container with yurt shell <name> . The terminal launched by this command is not very sophisticated
so it's best to configure a user to SSH with.
See yurt -h for more information about the CLI.
To get started:
$ git clone https://github.com/ckmetto/yurt.git
$ cd yurt
$ pip install -e .
$ export YURT_ENV=dev
$ yurt init
YURT_ENV=dev makes yurt set up a separate VM for development. When set, all commands refer to this development VM.
Similarly, you can set YURT_ENV=test to run tests in yet another separate VM with python -m unittest.
Please create an issue if something does not work for you. Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
Yurt is based on ideas, evaluation and prototyping presented by Collins Metto and is inspired by docker, vagrant, lxdock and LXD.