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Before using this product, please read the project status disclaimer.

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General Information

kamu is a single-binary utility that comes bundled with most of its dependencies. It relies on container-based virtualization (e.g. docker or podman) to run such heavyweight frameworks like Spark, Flink, and Jupyter in isolated environments without needing you to install thousands of libraries and bloating your beloved laptop with their dependencies. The tool comes with very good shell completions, so make sure to configure them! Please report any issues during the installation process here.

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Supported Platforms

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Linux

Linux is our primary target environment. We don’t have packages for various Linux flavors yet, but since the tool is just a simple binary it’s very easy to get started:
  1. Install docker using your distro’s package manager (alternatively we highly recommend trying podman)
  2. Make sure you can launch containers without sudo by following official documentation
  3. Install kamu via installer script by running: 
    curl -s "https://get.kamu.dev" | sh
  4. Verify your setup by running: 
    kamu system diagnose
See also:

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MacOS X

We fully support Intel and M-series Macs, to install kamu please follow these steps:
  1. Install Docker for Mac
    1. Consider allocating more CPUs and memory to the Docker VM in the settings
    2. If you want to run kamu outside of your user home directory - you may need to add additional mounts to the Docker VM. For example if your workspace is in /opt/myworkspace you’ll need to mount it under the same name into the VM in Docker settings.
  2. Install kamu via installer script by running: 
    curl -s "https://get.kamu.dev" | sh
  3. Verify your setup by running: 
    kamu system diagnose
See also:

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Windows (using WSL2)

  1. Install WSL2 following these steps Make sure you can at least open Linux shell before proceeding
  2. Install docker
    1. We recommend installing Docker Desktop for Windows and enable WSL2 backend
    2. Ensure that from your linux distribution you can launch containers without sudo and the following works: 
      docker run -it hello-world
  3. Inside WSL2 distribution install kamu via installer script by running: 
    curl -s "https://get.kamu.dev" | sh
  4. Follow installer instructions to update PATH and install completions: 
    # Add to the end of your ~/.bashrc
PATH="$PATH:/home/$USER/.local/bin
source <(kamu completions bash)
  5. After restarting the shell confirm that this works: 
    # Executable can be found
kamu

# Should auto-complete to `kamu version`
kamu vers<press TAB>
  6. Verify your setup by running: 
    kamu system diagnose
See also:

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Windows (using Docker Desktop)

The native Windows binary is still highly experimental, so in most cases it’s better to use the WSL
  1. Install and run Docker Desktop.
    1. It’s a good idea to give the Docker’s VM more CPU and RAM - you can do so in VirtualBox.
    2. Make sure that you can run docker ps successfully.
  2. We recommend using Windows Terminal that supports unicode symbols and full colors
  3. Download the latest kamu binary for Windows
  4. Add it to your PATH environment variable
Docker Toolbox runs Docker in a Virtual Machine. This means to mount a file from your host file system into a Docker container the file first needs to be mounted into VM, so make sure all paths that kamu will need are mapped in VirtualBox VM settings.
Example: Lets assume your workspace directory is C:\Users\me\kamu. When kamu runs it will detect that Docker runs in a VM it will convert it to /c/Users/me/kamu. So in your VM settings you may need to add a mapping from C:\Users\me to /c/Users/me.

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Upgrading

On most platforms a new version of kamu can be installed by simply re-running the installer script: 
curl -s "https://get.kamu.dev" | sh

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Installing shell completions

To be able to auto-complete the kamu commands please install completion scripts for the shell of your choosing. You can find detailed instructions by running kamu completions --help. If you use bash add the following to your ~/.bashrc file: 
source <(kamu completions bash)
If you use zsh add the following to your ~/.zshrc file: 
autoload -U +X bashcompinit && bashcompinit
source <(kamu completions bash)

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A Note on Docker Security

We take your security very seriously. Unfortunately the execution model of docker that involves running the daemon process under root violates the Unix user permission model. Combined with the step of making docker command sudo-less this means that any process you run under your user can potentially access the entire file system with root privileges. Until docker changes its runtime model, sudo-less access to Docker will remain a security threat. On our side we are taking following measures to gain your trust:
  • kamu and all of its components are open-source and available for review
  • All of our docker images are based on reputable source images and are available for review
  • When kamu starts docker containers it limits the scope of volumes it’s mounting to a minimum. You can review the volume mounts by running kamu with -v flag or using docker ps.
To avoid all these issues please consider using podman - this container runtime operates in daemon-less and root-less mode, so it’s fully compliant with the standard Unix permission model.

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Using Podman instead of Docker

podman is an alternative container runtime that fixes the security shortcomings of docker. We highly recommend you to give it a try, as we are planning to make it a default runtime in the near future.
Make sure to follow Podman’s Rootless Setup Guide to allow kamu to run containers without sudo.
In order to instruct kamu to use podman run: 
kamu config set --user engine.runtime podman
On some systems you need to separately install podman-dnsname package to allow containers to communicate with one another via hostnames. To check whether you have it run:
podman network create test
podman network ls
# NETWORK ID    NAME    VERSION  PLUGINS
# 9f86d081884c  test    0.4.0    bridge,portmap,firewall,tuning,dnsname
#                                                               ^^^ plugin installed
podman network prune

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Development Images

It is sometimes convenient to get kamu-cli in a Docker/Podman image. For this we have few options: For example, try running: 
docker run -it --rm ghcr.io/kamu-data/kamu-base:latest-with-data kamu list
These images have podman installed inside the container, so when kamu runs an engine podman will be trying to pull an image and start a container from within another container. For such container-in-container setup to work you may need to pass --privileged flag when running this image.
Last modified on March 16, 2026