Environment Variables

Environment Variables

This page documents the environment variables used in Lima.

LIMA_INSTANCE

• Description: Specifies the name of the Lima instance to use.
• Default: default
• Usage:

  export LIMA_INSTANCE=my-instance
  lima uname -a
  

LIMA_SHELL

• Description: Specifies the shell interpreter to use inside the Lima instance.
• Default: User’s shell configured inside the instance
• Usage:

  export LIMA_SHELL=/bin/bash
  lima
  

LIMA_WORKDIR

• Description: Specifies the initial working directory inside the Lima instance.
• Default: Current directory from the host
• Usage:

  export LIMA_WORKDIR=/home/user/project
  lima
  

LIMACTL

• Description: Specifies the path to the limactl binary.
• Default: limactl in $PATH
• Usage:

  export LIMACTL=/usr/local/bin/limactl
  lima
  

LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER

• Description: Specifies to use the SSH port forwarder (slow, stable) instead of gRPC (fast, unstable)
• Default: true
• Usage:

  export LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER=false
  

• Note: It is expected that this variable will be set to false by default in future when the gRPC port forwarder is well matured.

LIMA_USERNET_RESOLVE_IP_ADDRESS_TIMEOUT

• Description: Specifies the timeout duration for resolving the IP address in usernet.
• Default: 2 minutes
• Usage:

  export LIMA_USERNET_RESOLVE_IP_ADDRESS_TIMEOUT=5