colima-system

Run Colima as a headless system daemon on macOS via launchd. Provides a stable /var/run/docker.sock for Docker clients.

Requirements

• macOS (root required)
• Homebrew installed and configured
• colima (installed via Homebrew)
• envsubst (installed via Homebrew, from gettext package)

Install

# prerequisites
brew install colima gettext

# install (as root)
sudo /bin/sh /path/to/repo/setup.sh

Add user to docker group (macOS)

Add your macOS user to the docker group so you can use /var/run/docker.sock without sudo:

# add current user to the 'docker' group
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a "$USER" -t user docker

# verify membership
id -Gn | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -x docker || echo "not a member yet"

# re-login or restart your session for the change to take effect
# (a full log out/in is the most reliable)

Notes:

• Group membership applies to new login sessions only.
• Remove a user later with:

  sudo dseditgroup -o edit -d "$USER" -t user docker

Use

docker ps           # should work system-wide
sudo launchctl print system/colima.daemon
sudo launchctl print system/colima.socket.permissions

Uninstall

sudo launchctl bootout system/colima.socket.permissions || true
sudo launchctl bootout system/colima.daemon || true
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/colima.socket.permissions.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/colima.daemon.plist
sudo rm -f /var/run/docker.sock

Notes

• Creates hidden colima user and docker group.
• Docker socket is group-writable by docker; add users cautiously.
• This setup does not install any Docker client tools. Docker CLI is optional; install it only if you need client commands (e.g. brew install docker).