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 2.39 or newer. Compatible distributions include Debian 13 (trixie), Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Fedora 40+, and Rocky/RHEL 10. Older releases (Debian 12, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Rocky/RHEL 9) need to build instar from source until the project lowers its glibc baseline.
Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)¶
VERSION=0.2.0
curl -sLO "https://github.com/shakenfist/instar/releases/download/v${VERSION}/instar_${VERSION}-1_amd64.deb"
sudo apt install "./instar_${VERSION}-1_amd64.deb"
instar --help
Fedora / RHEL / SUSE (.rpm)¶
VERSION=0.2.0
curl -sLO "https://github.com/shakenfist/instar/releases/download/v${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=0.2.0
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).