coold Dev Environment Notes

This file documents the current local v5/coold dev setup in Coolify.

Roles

• scripts/dev.sh is the main developer-facing entrypoint. Use it for normal local workflows such as starting/stopping the stack, creating fresh dev state, inspecting Corrosion, managing firewall allow rules, and running example containers.
• scripts/coold-vm.sh is a lower-level Lima VM helper used by scripts/dev.sh. It exists separately to keep VM lifecycle and guest setup details out of the main dev orchestration script. Call it directly only when debugging or operating an individual VM, for example shell, status, logs-agent, or delete.
• Lima VMs act like real deployment servers.
• coolify init bootstrap owns host wiring:
  • WireGuard
  • Podman mesh networks
  • Corrosion config/schema/service
  • coold install/service
  • builder install/config
  • default-deny firewall service
• Coolify/Laravel dev owns Flux-specific wiring:
  • starts Flux inside the Coolify container
  • mints dev host JWTs
  • installs /etc/coolify/host-jwt into each VM
  • adds a coold.service systemd drop-in with COOLIFY_COOLD_FLUX_URL

Main commands

scripts/dev.sh up
scripts/dev.sh down
scripts/dev.sh clean-vms
scripts/dev.sh list

clean-vms deletes the Lima VM instances and VM-local state, including disks, containers, WireGuard keys, Corrosion DB, installed binaries, and firewall state. It does not delete the Coolify repo.

coolify helper

scripts/dev.sh coolify install
scripts/dev.sh coolify path
scripts/dev.sh coolify bootstrap-command
scripts/dev.sh coolify run <args>

The helper runs the coolify CLI from the Coolify development container. Lima VMs are addressed by their bridged mDNS names (<vm>.local), so the same addresses are used by bootstrap and by the v5 dev server seeder.

Because Docker Desktop does not reliably pass mDNS multicast into containers, scripts/dev.sh up resolves each <vm>.local name on the host and writes the resolved records into the Coolify container /etc/hosts before bootstrapping.

The generated bootstrap command uses the container CLI, the repo-local copy of the Lima SSH key, and dev WireGuard endpoint overrides, for example:

spin exec -T coolify /usr/local/bin/coolify init bootstrap \
  --nodes "coold-dev.local,coold-dev-2.local" \
  --ssh-key "/var/www/html/.dev/lima/ssh_key" \
  --ssh-user "coolify" \
  --wg-listen-port-overrides "coold-dev.local=51821,coold-dev-2.local=51822" \
  --wg-endpoint-overrides "coold-dev.local=coold-dev.local:51821,coold-dev-2.local=coold-dev-2.local:51822" \
  --coold-version "nightly" \
  --corrosion-version "v1.0.0" \
  --yes

Lima does not allow direct root SSH by default, so dev uses the normal Lima user with passwordless sudo. coolify wraps remote commands in sudo -n bash -lc when the SSH user is not root.

Default dev topology

After coolify init bootstrap, defaults are:

Checking state

scripts/dev.sh corrosion check
scripts/dev.sh corrosion containers
scripts/dev.sh corrosion config
scripts/dev.sh corrosion logs 1
scripts/dev.sh corrosion logs 2

corrosion containers shows both Corrosion service_endpoints and rootful / rootless Podman containers.

Example nginx containers

scripts/dev.sh example-nginx up
scripts/dev.sh example-nginx check-dns
scripts/dev.sh example-nginx down

The example containers are started with coold DNS:

--dns <local-mesh-gateway>
--dns-search default.coolify.internal

Expected service discovery format:

<container-name>.default.coolify.internal

Example:

coolify-example-nginx-2.default.coolify.internal -> 10.210.1.x

Firewall behavior

The mesh firewall is default-deny for inter-container traffic. Host-to-host WireGuard traffic can work while container-to-container traffic is blocked.

Allow traffic:

scripts/dev.sh firewall allow 10.210.0.2 10.210.1.2 tcp 80
scripts/dev.sh firewall list

Revoke traffic:

scripts/dev.sh firewall revoke
scripts/dev.sh firewall revoke <rule-id>

Why dev adds allow rules to both hosts

business traffic from container A on host 1 to container B on host 2 crosses forwarding/firewall logic on both sides:

10.210.0.2
  -> source host bridge/firewall
  -> coold-dev wg0
  -> WireGuard
  -> coold-dev-2 wg0
  -> destination host bridge/firewall
  -> 10.210.1.2

The default-deny hooks can drop the packet on either the source or destination host. For the two-node dev setup, scripts/dev.sh firewall allow writes the same allow tuple to every coold VM so the path works reliably.

Production should become topology-aware instead of blindly writing to every host:

• cross-host traffic: write allow rules to the source and destination hosts
• same-host traffic: write the allow rule only to that host
• larger clusters: do not install unrelated allow rules on unaffected hosts

Manual connectivity checks

Before allow rule, this should time out:

scripts/dev.sh shell 1
sudo podman exec coolify-example-nginx wget -T 3 -qO- http://10.210.1.2

After allow rule, this should return nginx HTML:

scripts/dev.sh firewall allow 10.210.0.2 10.210.1.2 tcp 80
scripts/dev.sh shell 1
sudo podman exec coolify-example-nginx wget -T 5 -qO- http://10.210.1.2 | head -n 1

Expected:

<!DOCTYPE html>