Environment Variables

Environment Variables

This page documents the environment variables used in Lima.

LIMA_HOME

• Description: Specifies the Lima home directory.
• Default: ~/.lima
• Usage:

  export LIMA_HOME=~/.lima-custom
  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_TEMPLATES_PATH

• Description: Specifies the directories used to resolve template:// URLs.
• Default: $LIMA_HOME/_templates:/usr/local/share/lima/templates
• Usage:

  export LIMA_TEMPLATES_PATH="$HOME/.config/lima/templates:/usr/local/share/lima/templates"
  limactl create --name my-vm template://my-distro
  

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) instead of gRPC (fast, previously unstable)
• Default: false (since v1.1.0-beta.0)
• Usage:

  export LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER=false
  

• Note: Deprecated since v1.1. It is expected that this variable will be removed in future.
• The history of the default value:

  Version	Default value
  v0.1.0	true, effectively
  v1.0.0	false
  v1.0.1	true
  v1.1.0-beta.0	false

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
  

_LIMA_QEMU_UEFI_IN_BIOS

• Description: Commands QEMU to load x86_64 UEFI images using -bios instead of pflash drives.
• Default: false on Unix like hosts and true on Windows hosts
• Usage:

  export _LIMA_QEMU_UEFI_IN_BIOS=true
  

• Note: It is expected that this variable will be set to false by default in future when QEMU supports pflash UEFI for accelerated guests on Windows.

_LIMA_WINDOWS_EXTRA_PATH

• Description: Additional directories which will be added to PATH by limactl.exe process to search for tools. It is useful, when there is a need to prevent collisions between binaries available in active shell and ones used by limactl.exe - injecting them only for the running process w/o altering PATH observed by user shell. Is is Windows specific and does nothing for other platforms.
• Default: unset
• Usage:

  set _LIMA_WINDOWS_EXTRA_PATH=C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin
  

• Note: It is an experimental setting and has no guarantees being ever promoted to stable. It may be removed or changed at any stage of project development.

QEMU_SYSTEM_AARCH64

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-aarch64 binary.
• Default: qemu-system-aarch64 found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_AARCH64=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-aarch64
  

QEMU_SYSTEM_ARM

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-arm binary.
• Default: qemu-system-arm found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_ARM=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-arm
  

QEMU_SYSTEM_PPC64

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-ppc64 binary.
• Default: qemu-system-ppc64 found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_PPC64=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-ppc64
  

QEMU_SYSTEM_RISCV64

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-riscv64 binary.
• Default: qemu-system-riscv64 found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_RISCV64=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-riscv64
  

QEMU_SYSTEM_S390X

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-s390x binary.
• Default: qemu-system-s390x found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_S390X=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-s390x
  

QEMU_SYSTEM_X86_64

• Description: Path to the qemu-system-x86_64 binary.
• Default: qemu-system-x86_64 found in $PATH
• Usage:

  export QEMU_SYSTEM_X86_64=/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64