Running `libguestfs` on Mac

10 Dec, 2024

When preparing VM images it is convenient to directly edit the contents of the image disk. libguestfs and its various tools (e.g. virt-customize) are the standard way of doing this.

No package managers on Mac OS currently package these, so it is easiest to run the tools in a Docker container.

I created and published a minimal container image as all other images are unpublished, unsupported, or not minimal:

• Docker Hub page
• Source code on GitHub

Details

• Based on Alpine Linux
• Installs guestfs-tools with apk from edge/testing
• Downloads a "fixed appliance" from the official website.
  • This is the VM image which libguestfs uses as the host OS for its operations
  • It is called "fixed" because it does not rely on the supermin tool being installed.
• Requires wrapper scripts to handling the mounting of input files and output directories. Examples included in the GitHub repository

Appendix

• There is a [legacy Homebrew issue] about libguestfs.

#containerization #programming #software-i-wrote