Troubleshooting

Stale lock

DVM uses ~/.cache/dvm/<vm>.lock to avoid overlapping operations. If a process was interrupted and no DVM command is running, remove the stale directory:

rmdir ~/.cache/dvm/app.lock

Failed setup

DVM does not roll back partial setup. Fix the script and sync again. Make setup scripts idempotent:

test -x /usr/local/bin/tool || sudo install -m 0755 tool /usr/local/bin/tool

Unsafe permissions

DVM refuses config and setup scripts that are not owned by you or are group/world writable. Repair:

chmod go-w ~/.config/dvm ~/.config/dvm/config.sh ~/.config/dvm/setup.sh
chmod go-w ~/.config/dvm/vms/app ~/.config/dvm/vms/app/config.sh
chmod go-w ~/.config/dvm/vms/app/setup.sh

The global setup script runs by convention from ~/.config/dvm/setup.sh, and the per-VM script from ~/.config/dvm/vms/<vm>/setup.sh. Neither is a config variable; create the file to enable it, remove it to disable it.

systemd-binfmt failed on aarch64 Lima

On some aarch64 Lima images systemd-binfmt.service reports failed even though the VM needs no foreign binary format handlers. It is harmless, but it makes systemctl --failed noisy. Mask it from a setup script to keep boot clean:

sudo systemctl mask --now systemd-binfmt.service || true
sudo systemctl reset-failed systemd-binfmt.service || true

Skip this if you actually run foreign-architecture binaries in the guest.

Debug

DVM_DRY_RUN=1 dvm sync app
dvm ls --only-config
dvm ssh app -- true
dvm ssh app -- sudo journalctl -f

Use Lima directly for deeper inspection:

limactl list
limactl shell dvm-app