Container VMs

The devx vm commands manage the lifecycle of your local development VM — a Fedora CoreOS instance running inside Podman Machine.

Commands

devx vm init

Provisions a new VM with Cloudflare Tunnel and Tailscale pre-configured.

devx vm init

This is the only command most developers need to run. It:

1. Compiles a Butane config into Ignition format
2. Creates a Podman Machine with the Ignition file
3. Starts the VM and waits for systemd services to boot
4. Verifies Cloudflare Tunnel and Tailscale connectivity

Flags:

Flag	Default	Description
--provider	podman	Backend: podman, docker, or orbstack
--dry-run	—	Preview the Ignition config without creating the VM

devx vm status

Shows the health of all three components:

devx vm status

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│  📊 VM Status
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│  VM:               ✅ running
│  Cloudflare:       ✅ connected (tunnel-id: abc123)
│  Tailscale:        ✅ connected (100.x.x.x)
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

devx vm resize

Dynamically adjust VM resources without reprovisioning:

devx vm resize --cpus 4 --memory 8192

devx vm ssh

Drop into an SSH shell inside the VM:

devx vm ssh

devx vm sleep / devx vm sleep-watch

Pause the VM to free resources, or run a background daemon that auto-sleeps idle VMs:

devx vm sleep              # Pause now
devx vm sleep-watch        # Auto-sleep after idle timeout

devx vm teardown

Stop and remove the VM. This is a destructive operation and will prompt for confirmation:

devx vm teardown

Ignition Configuration

The VM is configured using a Butane file that compiles to Ignition format. This config:

• Installs and starts tailscaled and cloudflared as systemd units
• Sets kernel parameters (fs.inotify.max_user_watches, fs.aio-max-nr)
• Configures persistent volumes for container data
• Injects credentials from your .env file

The Butane templates are stored in internal/ignition/ and compiled at devx vm init time.