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Customising the VM

bluefin-vm up uses sensible defaults. Anything you change is saved to ~/.config/bluefin-vm/config.toml and read by later commands. Change it either with:

bluefin-vm tui

or by editing the file directly. Its keys, units, and precedence are covered in VM profiles.

The settings fall into three groups:

  • Account — the username, which ssh public key is installed, whether sudo prompts for the login password, and whether ssh accepts password login at all.
  • Share — the host directory mounted into the guest as bluefin-share, and whether the guest may write to it.
  • Resources — virtual cores, memory, display resolution, desktop scale, and Refit.

In the TUI, pressing Enter on the last row saves and brings the VM up in one step.

When a change takes effect

The account and the resources are fixed when the VM is created, so editing them applies to the next VM you create rather than the one you have. Inside the VM, change what you like with the usual tools; those changes stay in the VM rather than in its profile. The share is passed on every boot, so it applies immediately.

Display

Refit, on by default, lets Tart resize the guest to follow the window — convenient, but the resolution is then whatever the window happens to be, so a fixed resolution and a guest scale cannot hold. The form only offers Display and Scale with Refit off.

With Refit off the guest runs at the resolution you chose and applies the scale at first login, snapped to the nearest value that display supports. The supported values are a per-mode set that only the running desktop knows, so a 150% target can land on 133%.

More than one VM

Profiles are named, and Bluefin is the default name used when you do not specify one. To create another machine, use another name.

bluefin-vm tui --name work    # creates the profile
bluefin-vm up --name work     # creates the VM

If a profile with the given name does not exist it will be created using default values. Each profile has its own account, share, and resources. The disk is cached by checksum, so a second VM reuses the download rather than repeating it.