How to install on Windows ?

[benoit-cty]

Hello,
Thanks for this great tool. I manage open-source packages, and I identified Lima as a way to have the same behaviour on multiple OS.

I struggle to make it works under Windows. The doc isn't clear but the discussions and issues let me think it still possible.

I installed it with brew, under WSL2:

brew install lima
brew install lima-additional-guestagents

limactl create default works.

But I can't start:

❯ limactl start default
INFO[0000] Using the existing instance "default"
INFO[0000] Starting the instance "default" with internal VM driver "qemu"
INFO[0002] [hostagent] hostagent socket created at /home/ben/.lima/default/ha.sock
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Using system firmware ("/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/qemu/edk2-x86_64-code.fd")
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Starting QEMU (hint: to watch the boot progress, see "/home/ben/.lima/default/serial*.log")
INFO[0003] SSH Local Port: 33525
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Waiting for the essential requirement 1 of 3: "ssh"
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Driver stopped due to error: "exit status 1"
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Shutting down the host agent
INFO[0002] [hostagent] Shutting down QEMU with the power button
WARN[0002] [hostagent] failed to open the QMP socket "/home/ben/.lima/default/qmp.sock", forcibly killing QEMU  error="dial unix /home/ben/.lima/default/qmp.sock: connect: connection refused"
INFO[0002] [hostagent] QEMU has already exited
FATA[0003] exiting, status={Running:false Degraded:false Exiting:true Errors:[] SSHLocalPort:0 CloudInitProgress:<nil> PortForward:<nil> Vsock:<nil>} (hint: see "/home/ben/.lima/default/ha.stderr.log")

No more success with template:docker nor --vm-type=wsl2:

❯ limactl start template:docker
? Creating an instance "docker" Proceed with the current configuration
INFO[0003] Starting the instance "docker" with internal VM driver "qemu"
INFO[0003] Attempting to download the image              arch=x86_64 digest="sha256:7aa6d9f5e8a3a55c7445b138d31a73d1187871211b2b7da9da2e1a6cbf169b21" location="https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/noble/release-20260225/ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img"
Downloading the image (ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img)
599.91 MiB / 599.91 MiB [----------------------------------] 100.00% 13.16 MiB/s
INFO[0050] Downloaded the image from "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/noble/release-20260225/ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img"
INFO[0050] Resize instance docker's disk from 3.5GiB to 100GiB
INFO[0057] [hostagent] hostagent socket created at /home/ben/.lima/docker/ha.sock
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Using system firmware ("/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/qemu/edk2-x86_64-code.fd")
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Starting QEMU (hint: to watch the boot progress, see "/home/ben/.lima/docker/serial*.log")
INFO[0059] SSH Local Port: 34021
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Waiting for the essential requirement 1 of 3: "ssh"
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Driver stopped due to error: "exit status 1"
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Shutting down the host agent
INFO[0058] [hostagent] Shutting down QEMU with the power button
WARN[0058] [hostagent] failed to open the QMP socket "/home/ben/.lima/docker/qmp.sock", forcibly killing QEMU  error="dial unix /home/ben/.lima/docker/qmp.sock: connect: connection refused"
INFO[0058] [hostagent] QEMU has already exited
FATA[0059] exiting, status={Running:false Degraded:false Exiting:true Errors:[] SSHLocalPort:0 CloudInitProgress:<nil> PortForward:<nil> Vsock:<nil>} (hint: see "/home/ben/.lima/docker/ha.stderr.log")

❯ limactl start --vm-type=wsl2 --mount-type=wsl2 --containerd=system
INFO[0000] Using the existing instance "default"
WARN[0000] `--containerd` is not applicable to an existing instance (Hint: create a new instance with `limactl create --containerd=system --name=NAME`)
FATA[0000] failed to apply yq expression ".mountType = \"wsl2\" | .vmType = \"wsl2\"" to instance "default": failed to resolve vm for "/home/ben/.lima/default/lima.yaml": vmType "wsl2" is not a registered driver

Thanks for your help.

[AkihiroSuda]

You have to run limactl.exe outside, not inside, WSL2.
limactl.exe can be built by running make on Windows with Go and GNU make installed.
The binary artifact will be also available when #4789 is merged.

Eventually we should make it installable with winget. (help wanted from Windows users)

See also:

lima/.github/workflows/test.yml

Lines 208 to 235 in f8d02f4

	windows-qemu:
	name: "Windows tests (QEMU)"
	runs-on: windows-2025
	timeout-minutes: 30
	steps:
	- name: Set gitconfig
	run: |
	git config --global core.autocrlf false
	git config --global core.eol lf
	- uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6.0.2
	- uses: actions/setup-go@4b73464bb391d4059bd26b0524d20df3927bd417 # v6.3.0
	with:
	go-version: stable
	- name: Make
	run: make
	- name: Install QEMU
	run: |
	winget install --silent --accept-source-agreements --accept-package-agreements --disable-interactivity SoftwareFreedomConservancy.QEMU
	- name: Integration tests (QEMU, Windows host)
	run: |
	$env:PATH = "$pwd\_output\bin;" + 'C:\msys64\usr\bin;' + 'C:\Program Files\QEMU;' + $env:PATH
	pacman -Sy --noconfirm openbsd-netcat diffutils socat w3m
	$env:MSYS2_ENV_CONV_EXCL = 'HOME_HOST;HOME_GUEST;_LIMA_WINDOWS_EXTRA_PATH'
	$env:HOME_HOST = $(cygpath.exe "$env:USERPROFILE")
	$env:HOME_GUEST = "$env:HOME_HOST"
	$env:LIMACTL_CREATE_ARGS = '--vm-type=qemu'
	$env:_LIMA_WINDOWS_EXTRA_PATH = 'C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin'
	bash.exe -c "./hack/test-templates.sh templates/default.yaml"

[afbjorklund]

It should be possible to run Lima under nested KVM virtualization in WSL2. Maybe not what you want, but possible....

There should be more details in the logs (Driver stopped due to error: "exit status 1"). Can also check kvm-ok

[afbjorklund]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config#wslconfig

nestedVirtualization (default: true)