This is the Go port of the boot2docker management script. It is intended to replace the shell script eventually. Currently the Go port is usable but since it is under active development, frequent changes and bugs are to be expected. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

This tool downloads the boot2docker ISO image, creates a VirtualBox virtual machine, sets up two networks for that virtual machine (one NAT to allow the VM and containers to access the internet, the other host-only to allow container port mapping to work securely), and then provides the user a simple way to login via SSH.

On Windows, MSYS SSH provides a first class way to connect to the boot2docker VM using boot2docker-cli.exe ssh.

You can dowload binary releases at https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker-cli/releases

You need to have Go compiler installed, and $GOPATH properly setup. Then run

go get github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker-cli

The binary will be available at $GOPATH/bin/boot2docker-cli. However the binary built this way will have missing version information when you run

boot2docker-cli version

You can solve the issue by using make goinstall

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker-cli
make goinstall

You can cross compile to OS X, Windows, and Linux. For that you need to first make your Go compiler ready for cross compiling to the target platforms.

We provide a Makefile to make the process a bit easier.

make darwin     # build for OS X/amd64
make linux      # build for Linux/amd64
make windows    # build for Windows/amd64
make all        # build for all three above
make clean      # clean up the built binaries

Built binaries will be available in the current directory.

You can also build in a Docker container.

make dockerbuild

Built binaries will be available in the current directory.

Currently the binary cross-compiled from Windows/Linux to OS X has a TLS issue, and as a result

boot2docker-cli download

will fail. You need to do a native OS X build to avoid this problem.

To initialize a new boot2docker VM, run

boot2docker-cli init

Then you can start the VM by

boot2docker-cli up

To stop the VM, run

boot2docker-cli down

And finally if you don't need the VM anymore, run

boot2docker-cli delete

to remove it completely.

The boot2docker-cli binary reads configuration from $BOOT2DOCKER_PROFILE, or if not found, from $BOOT2DOCKER_DIR/profile. ./boot2docker-cli config will tell you where it is looking for the file, and will also output the settings that are in use, so you can initialise a default file to customise using boot2docker-cli config > /home/sven/.boot2docker/profile.

Currently you can configure the following options (undefined options take default values):

# Comments must be on their own lines; inline comments are not supported.

# path to VirtualBox management utility
vbm="VBoxManage"

# path to SSH client utility
ssh="ssh"

# name of boot2docker virtual machine
vm="boot2docker-vm"

# path to boot2docker config directory
dir="$HOME/.boot2docker"

# path to boot2docker ISO image
iso="$BOOT2DOCKER_DIR/boot2docker.iso"

# VM disk image size in MB
disksize=20000

# VM memory size in MB
memory=1024

# host port forwarding to port 22 in the VM
sshport=2022

# host port forwarding to port 4243 in the VM
dockerport=4243

# host-only network host IP
hostip=192.168.59.3

# host only network network mask
netmask=255.255.255.0

# host-only network DHCP server IP
dhcpip=192.168.59.99

# host-only network DHCP server enabled
dhcp=true

# host-only network IP range lower bound
lowerip=192.168.59.103

# host-only network IP range upper bound
upperip=192.168.59.254

Environment variables of the form $ENVVAR in the profile will be expanded, even on Windows.

You can override the configurations using command-line flags. Type boot2docker-cli -h for more information. The configuration file options are the same as the command-line flags with long names.

We are implementing the same process as Docker merge approval, so all commits need to be done via pull requests, and will need three or more LGTMs (Looks Good To Me) before merging.

To submit pull request, please make sure to follow the Go Style Guide. In particular, you MUST run gofmt before committing. We suggest you run go tool vet -all . as well.

Please rebase the upstream in your fork in order to keep the commit history tidy.