Cheat Sheet

Quick command reference for common daily operations.

⚠️ If the caked service is active, do not use caked directly. Use cakectl commands against the running service.

VM lifecycle (cakectl)

• List VMs:
  • cakectl list
• Get VM details:
  • cakectl infos <vm-name>
• Start / stop / restart:
  • cakectl start <vm-name>
  • cakectl stop <vm-name>
  • cakectl restart <vm-name>
• Launch a new VM:
  • cakectl launch ...

Guest access (cakectl)

• Run one command in guest:
  • cakectl exec <vm-name> -- <command> [args...]
• Open guest shell:
  • cakectl sh <vm-name>
• Wait for IP:
  • cakectl waitip <vm-name>

Images and registry (cakectl)

• Image list/info/pull:
  • cakectl image list <remote>
  • cakectl image info <image>
  • cakectl image pull <image>
• Registry auth:
  • cakectl login <host>
  • cakectl logout <host>
• Push/pull VM images:
  • cakectl pull <name> <image>
  • cakectl push <local-name> <remote-name>

Networks (cakectl)

• List networks:
  • cakectl networks list
• Inspect one network:
  • cakectl networks infos <network>
• Create/start/stop:
  • cakectl networks create ...
  • cakectl networks start <network>
  • cakectl networks stop <network>

Local daemon/admin (caked)

• Run daemon command directly:
  • caked <command> ...
• Certificates:
  • caked certificates get
  • caked certificates generate
• Service mode:
  • caked service listen --secure
  • caked service status
  • caked service stop

Useful global options

• cakectl --connect <address>
• cakectl --disable-tls
• cakectl --system
• caked --log-level <level>
• caked --format json

Docs links

• Detailed command groups: Command Summary
• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting

Real workflows

1) Create and start a VM

from OCI registry

cakectl build --name demo-vm --cpu 4 --memory 8192 --disk-size 40G oci://ghcr.io/example/image:latest

from https

cakectl build --name demo-vm --cpu 4 --memory 8192 --disk-size 40G https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/noble/release/ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img

from simplestream remote

cakectl build --name demo-vm --cpu 4 --memory 8192 --disk-size 40G ubuntu:noble

2) Start an existing VM, wait for IP, inspect status

cakectl start demo-vm
cakectl waitip demo-vm
cakectl infos demo-vm

3) Open shell and run one command in guest

cakectl shell demo-vm
cakectl exec demo-vm -- uname -a

4) Push a local VM image to remote registry

cakectl login ghcr.io --username <username> --password <password>
cakectl push demo-vm ghcr.io/<owner>/demo-vm:latest
cakectl logout ghcr.io

5) Create and manage a shared network

cakectl networks create --name shared-dev --mode shared --gateway 192.168.105.1 --dhcp-end 192.168.105.254 --netmask 255.255.255.0
cakectl networks start shared-dev
cakectl networks infos shared-dev
cakectl networks stop shared-dev