1. Boot straight from a registry

OCI refs in template = and what pull-on-up does.

After this lesson you can

- Tell a local store ref (arch/name@version) from a registry ref (host/owner/name:tag) - Pin a version with @/:tag or track :latest - See what landed in the store with vmlab template list

A VM's template accepts two shapes. A store ref like x86_64/linux-modern@1.0 names a disk already in the local store. A registry ref like ghcr.io/vmlabdev/vmlab-templates/alpine-3.23 names an OCI artifact; on vmlab up, anything missing locally is pulled first. No tag means :latest.

After the module-1 lab, run vmlab template list — the pulled Alpine template is now an ordinary store entry, shared by every lab on the host.

§ 1Exercise: Inspect the store

List the local template store and identify the Alpine entry's arch, name, and version.

console
vmlab template list
vmlab template list --json

Expected result

An x86_64/alpine-3.23@<version> row; --json adds sizes and the created timestamp.

Hint

Registry pulls land under the artifact's recorded arch/name — the registry path is not stored verbatim.