VFHost is a simple GUI for hosting Linux VMs on macOS Big Sur's Virtualization.framework.

Downloads

Downloads are available for version 0.2.x. These builds are notarized by Apple.

You should know

This information will be incorporated in the app, but for now...

• Managed Mode
  • Your installations are located at ~/Library/Application Support/VFHost
  • You can't currently change your CPU/memory allocation through Managed Mode. Turning off Managed Mode and pointing VFHost to the files in the directory above is a workaround for now, though this will be implemented soon.
  • During the install process, the root disk is resized to ~8GB. You can manually resize it if you wish. Disk resize through VFHost is a high priority feature, and will be implemented soon.
  • To boot your VM outside of Managed Mode, you'll need to set the kernel parameters console=hvc0 root=/dev/vda

Building

Open VFHost.xcodeproj, add your certificate, and you're off to the races.

Known issues & workarounds

• VFHost uses screen internally to attach to your VM. On rare occasion, screen sessions are left behind and error messages appear, even after the app is restarted. First, make sure you're not using any screen sessions yourself - we're about to kill them all. Open Terminal and run % pkill SCREEN.
• If you find issues, please report them!

Similar projects

evansm7/vftool - this is a more mature (CLI-only) wrapper for Virtualization.framework

License

VFHost is under the BSD license - you can find it here