Problem
Lima VMs don't survive reboots on headless macOS systems. Lima installs a
LaunchAgent, which requires an active user session — so on a server with
auto-login disabled, the VM never starts after a reboot.
This blocks Lima from being a practical choice for use on an unattended macOS system (e.g. home servers, CI machines, or any Mac that needs to run services continuously without a logged-in user).
macOS LaunchDaemons, which start at boot before any user logs in, solve for this. Lima doesn't currently support installing instances as LaunchDaemons.
Value
Adding LaunchDaemon support would make Lima viable for headless macOS server deployments — a use case that is otherwise well-served by Lima's architecture (Apple Virtualization.framework, bridged networking, CLI-driven) but currently blocked by this single gap.
This was touched on in #1027 but not resolved.
Next Steps
I've a working implementation ready and I'll follow with a PR.
Problem
Lima VMs don't survive reboots on headless macOS systems. Lima installs a
LaunchAgent, which requires an active user session — so on a server with
auto-login disabled, the VM never starts after a reboot.
This blocks Lima from being a practical choice for use on an unattended macOS system (e.g. home servers, CI machines, or any Mac that needs to run services continuously without a logged-in user).
macOS LaunchDaemons, which start at boot before any user logs in, solve for this. Lima doesn't currently support installing instances as LaunchDaemons.
Value
Adding LaunchDaemon support would make Lima viable for headless macOS server deployments — a use case that is otherwise well-served by Lima's architecture (Apple Virtualization.framework, bridged networking, CLI-driven) but currently blocked by this single gap.
This was touched on in #1027 but not resolved.
Next Steps
I've a working implementation ready and I'll follow with a PR.