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Apple Sillicon Podman Setup

This tutorial walks you through installing Lima, creating an x86_64 Podman VM, configuring the Podman CLI to use it, and verifying that everything is working correctly. This is especially useful on Apple Silicon when you need x86_64 container builds (for example, if ARM builds break under QEMU).

The Problem

Sometimes Mac cannot translate the commands in one chip architecture so we need a layer to do this for us. Qemu is usual the software for the job, but in some cases when the process for building images is computationally complex the M series mac will Sig fault.

Symptoms

You might see a failure to build the UI

RUN pnpm run build:vite
Failed to run

You might see a failue building the API

STEP 9/19: COPY packages/db/ ./packages/db/
--> af95bf5b5140
STEP 10/19: RUN if [ "$TORCH_VARIANT" = "cpu" ]; then         echo "Installing PyTorch CPU version (lightweight, ~176MB)..." &&         uv pip install --python $(which python3) --system --no-cache --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu torch;     else         echo "Installing PyTorch CUDA version (GPU-enabled, ~800MB)..." &&         uv pip install --python $(which python3) --system --no-cache torch;     fi
Installing PyTorch CPU version (lightweight, ~176MB)...
qemu: uncaught target signal 11 (Segmentation fault) - core dumped
Error: building at STEP "RUN if [ "$TORCH_VARIANT" = "cpu" ]; then         echo "Installing PyTorch CPU version (lightweight, ~176MB)..." &&         uv pip install --python $(which python3) --system --no-cache --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu torch;     else         echo "Installing PyTorch CUDA version (GPU-enabled, ~800MB)..." &&         uv pip install --python $(which python3) --system --no-cache torch;     fi": while running runtime: exit status 139
make: *** [build-api] Error 139

The Solution

1. Install Lima

brew install lima

2. Create an x86_64 Podman VM

Use Lima’s built-in Podman template:

limactl create --name podman --arch x86_64 --vm-type qemu template:podman

You’ll should be prompted: Proceed with the current configuration? Choose Yes and wait. This part downloads the image and boots the VM — it may take a little while.

3. Verify Your Lima Instances

Before you continue, check which Lima VMs exist:

limactl ls

Example output:

NAME STATUS SSH VMTYPE ARCH CPUS MEMORY DISK DIR podman Running 127.0.0.1:49576 qemu x86_64 4 4GiB 100GiB ~/.lima/podman podman-aarch64 Stopped 127.0.0.1:0 vz aarch64 4 4GiB 100GiB ~/.lima/podman-arm64

4. Configure Podman CLI to Use the Lima Podman VM

Replace with your macOS username:

podman system connection add lima-podman \
  "unix:///Users/<your username>/.lima/podman/sock/podman.sock"

5. Set Lima Podman as the Default Connection

podman system connection default lima-podman

You can confirm:

podman system connection ls

6. Test Podman with a Basic Container

podman run quay.io/podman/hello

If you see a greeting message, everything is working 🎉

7. Verify You're Running x86_64 Containers

Because the VM is x86_64, images should report x86_64 inside:

podman run fedora:latest uname -a

8. You finished!