Chapter 2. Installation

2.1. Minimum system requirements

CodeReady Containers has the following minimum hardware and operating system requirements.

2.1.1. Hardware requirements

CodeReady Containers requires the following system resources:

  • 4 physical CPU cores
  • 9 GB of free memory
  • 35 GB of storage space
Note

The OpenShift cluster requires these minimum resources to run in the CodeReady Containers virtual machine. Some workloads may require more resources. To assign more resources to the CodeReady Containers virtual machine, see Configuring the virtual machine.

2.1.2. Operating system requirements

CodeReady Containers requires the following minimum version of a supported operating system:

2.1.2.1. Microsoft Windows

  • On Microsoft Windows, CodeReady Containers requires the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) or newer. CodeReady Containers does not work on earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Windows 10 Home Edition is not supported.

2.1.2.2. macOS

  • On macOS, CodeReady Containers requires macOS 10.14 Mojave or newer. CodeReady Containers does not work on earlier versions of macOS.

2.1.2.3. Linux

  • On Linux, CodeReady Containers is only supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 7.5 or newer (including 8.x versions) and on the latest two stable Fedora releases.
  • When using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the machine running CodeReady Containers must be registered with the Red Hat Customer Portal.
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or newer and Debian 10 or newer are not officially supported and may require manual set up of the host machine.
  • See Required software packages to install the required packages for your Linux distribution.

2.2. Required software packages for Linux

CodeReady Containers requires the libvirt and NetworkManager packages to run on Linux. Consult the following table to find the command used to install these packages for your Linux distribution:

Table 2.1. Package installation commands by distribution

Linux DistributionInstallation command

Fedora

sudo dnf install NetworkManager

Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS

su -c 'yum install NetworkManager'

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon libvirt-daemon-system network-manager

2.3. Installing CodeReady Containers

CodeReady Containers is available as a portable executable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows. On macOS, CodeReady Containers is available using a guided installer.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Download the latest release of CodeReady Containers for your platform.

  2. On macOS, run the guided installer and follow the instructions. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Microsoft Windows, assuming the archive is in the ~/Downloads directory, follow the procedure for your platform.

    • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

      1. Extract the contents of the archive: 

        $ cd ~/Downloads
$ tar xvf crc-linux-amd64.tar.xz

      2. Create the ~/bin directory if it does not exist and copy the crc executable to it: 

        $ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ cp ~/Downloads/crc-linux-*-amd64/crc ~/bin

      3. Add the ~/bin directory to your PATH: 

        $ export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin' >> ~/.bashrc

    • For Microsoft Windows:

      1. Extract the contents of the archive.
      2. Create the desired directory path for CodeReady Containers and copy the extracted crc.exe executable to it.

      3. Add the directory path to your PATH environment variable.

        Note

        On Microsoft Windows, you must execute the CodeReady Containers executable from your local C:\ drive. You cannot run CodeReady Containers from a network drive.

        If you cannot install the executable in your PATH, run CodeReady Containers from the current directory as ./crc.exe.

2.4. Upgrading CodeReady Containers

Newer versions of the CodeReady Containers executable require manual set up to prevent potential incompatibilities with earlier versions.

Procedure

  1. Download the latest release of CodeReady Containers.

  2. Delete the existing CodeReady Containers virtual machine: 

    $ crc delete
    Warning

    The crc delete command results in the loss of data stored in the CodeReady Containers virtual machine. Save any desired information stored in the virtual machine before running this command.

  3. Replace the earlier crc executable with the executable of the latest release. Verify that the new crc executable is in use by checking its version: 

    $ crc version

  4. Set up the new CodeReady Containers release: 

    $ crc setup

  5. Start the new CodeReady Containers virtual machine: 

    $ crc start