Network on Lima

Default user-mode network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

By default Lima only enables the user-mode networking aka “slirp”.

The subnet is hard-coded to 192.168.5.0/24. Use user-v2 network to customize the subnet.

Guest IP (192.168.5.15)

The guest IP address is set to 192.168.5.15.

This IP address is not accessible from the host by design.

Use vzNAT or managed networks to allow accessing the guest IP from the host and other guests.

Host IP (192.168.5.2)

The loopback addresses of the host is 192.168.5.2 and is accessible from the guest as host.lima.internal.

user-v2 network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 0.16.0

user-v2 network provides a user-mode networking similar to the default user-mode network and also provides support for vm -> vm communication.

To enable this network mode, define a network with mode: user-v2 in networks.yaml

By default, the below network configuration is already applied (Since v0.18).

...
networks:
 user-v2:
 mode: user-v2
 gateway: 192.168.104.1
 netmask: 255.255.255.0
...

Instances can then reference these networks from their lima.yaml file:

vzNAT network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 0.14, macOS >= 13.0

vzNAT assigns a “real” IP address that is reachable from the host.

Compared to managed networks, the “vzNAT” network:

does not need the socket_vmnet binary and the sudoers file.
has a significant advantage in the throughput. See the benchmark result.

For VZ instances, the “vzNAT” network can be configured as follows:

limactl start --vm-type=vz --network=vzNAT

networks:
- vzNAT: true

Unmanaged networks (socket_vmnet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

⚡ Requirement	macOS

Lima can also connect to “unmanaged” networks addressed by “socket”. This means that the daemons will not be controlled by Lima, but must be started before the instance. The interface type (host, shared, or bridged) is configured in socket_vmnet and not in lima.

See Managed networks (macOS) for how to install socket_vmnet.

networks:
 - socket: "/var/run/socket_vmnet"