Installing CRC

Minimum system requirements

CRC has the following minimum hardware and operating system requirements.

Hardware requirements

CRC is supported on these architectures:

Table 1. Preset and architecture compatibility
Preset	AMD64	Intel 64	Apple silicon
OpenShift Container Platform	yes	yes	yes
OKD	yes	yes	no
MicroShift	yes	yes	yes

CRC does not support nested virtualization.

Depending on the desired container runtime, CRC requires the following system resources:

For OpenShift Container Platform

4 physical CPU cores
10.5 GB of free memory
35 GB of storage space

For MicroShift

2 physical CPU cores
4 GB of free memory
35 GB of storage space

The OpenShift Container Platform and MicroShift presets require these minimum resources to run in the CRC instance. Some workloads might require more resources. To assign more resources to the CRC instance, see Configuring the instance.

Operating system requirements

CRC requires the following minimum version of a supported operating system:

Requirements on Microsoft Windows

On Microsoft Windows, CRC requires fully updated Microsoft Windows 10 or Microsoft Windows 11. CRC does not work on earlier versions of Microsoft Windows.
CRC does not work on Microsoft Windows Home Edition.

Requirements on macOS

On macOS, CRC requires macOS 12 Monterey or later. CRC does not work on earlier versions of macOS.

Requirements on Linux

On Linux, CRC is supported only on the latest two Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 8 and 9 minor releases and on the latest two stable Fedora releases.
When using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the machine running CRC must be registered with the Red Hat Customer Portal.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later and Debian 10 or later are not supported and might require manual set up of the host machine.
See Required software packages to install the required packages for your Linux distribution.

Required software packages for Linux

CRC 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. Package installation commands by distribution
Linux Distribution	Installation command
Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS	`sudo dnf install NetworkManager`
Debian/Ubuntu	`sudo apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon libvirt-daemon-system network-manager`

Installing CRC

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

Prerequisites

Your host machine must meet the minimum system requirements. For more information, see Minimum system requirements.

Procedure

Download the latest release of CRC for your platform.
On Microsoft Windows, extract the contents of the archive.
On macOS or Microsoft Windows, run the guided installer and follow the instructions.

On Microsoft Windows, you must install CRC to your local C:\ drive. You cannot run CRC from a network drive.

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux, assuming the archive is in the ~/Downloads directory, follow these steps:
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

About usage data collection

CRC prompts you before use for optional, anonymous usage data collection to assist with development. No personally identifiable information is collected. Consent for usage data collection can be granted or revoked by you at any time.

Additional resources

For more information about collected data, see the Red Hat Telemetry data collection notice.
To grant or revoke consent for usage data collection, see Configuring usage data collection.

Configuring usage data collection

Consent for usage data collection can be granted or revoked by you at any time using the following configuration commands.

Changes to telemetry consent do not modify a running instance. The change will take effect next time you run the crc start command.

Procedure

To manually enable telemetry, run the following command:
```
$ crc config set consent-telemetry yes
```
To manually disable telemetry, run the following command:
```
$ crc config set consent-telemetry no
```

Additional resources

For more information about the collected data, see the Red Hat Telemetry data collection notice.

Upgrading CRC

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

Procedure

Download the latest release of CRC.
Delete the existing CRC instance:
```
$ crc delete
```
The crc delete command results in the loss of data stored in the CRC instance. Save any desired information stored in the instance before running this command.
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
```
Set up the new CRC release:
```
$ crc setup
```
Start the new CRC instance:
```
$ crc start
```