Installation¶
Pre-built x86_64 Linux artifacts are published on every release at GitHub Releases. Pick the format that matches your distro.
The published packages require glibc 2.31 or newer. The release binary is built on Debian 11 (bullseye), so a single artifact runs across Debian 11+, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 24.04 LTS, Fedora, and Rocky/RHEL 9 and 10. (glibc is forward-compatible: a binary runs on any host whose glibc is at least the one it was built against.)
Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)¶
VERSION=0.3.0
curl -sLO "https://github.com/shakenfist/instar/releases/download/v${VERSION}/instar_${VERSION}-1_amd64.deb"
sudo apt install "./instar_${VERSION}-1_amd64.deb"
instar --help
Fedora / RHEL / SUSE (.rpm)¶
VERSION=0.3.0
curl -sLO "https://github.com/shakenfist/instar/releases/download/v${VERSION}/instar-${VERSION}-1.x86_64.rpm"
sudo dnf install "./instar-${VERSION}-1.x86_64.rpm"
instar --help
The packages install the VMM at /usr/bin/instar and the six guest
binaries (loaded into the KVM sandbox at runtime) at
/usr/lib/instar/.
Tarball (any Linux)¶
VERSION=0.3.0
curl -sL "https://github.com/shakenfist/instar/releases/download/v${VERSION}/instar-v${VERSION}-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz" \
| sudo tar xz -C /usr/local/bin/
instar --help
The tarball contains the VMM and guest .bin files together; instar
finds them by looking in the directory containing the executable.
System requirements¶
- Linux (instar uses KVM for sandboxed image processing)
- KVM access:
/dev/kvmmust be accessible - Your user must be in the
kvmgroup (sudo usermod -aG kvm $USER)
Build from source¶
If you prefer to build from source, see the development guide. This requires Docker and a nightly Rust toolchain (handled automatically by the build container).