Settings

Press , to open the settings screen.

Settings

  Data Directory
  Where VM projects and disks are stored
  /Users/you/.vmup▎               

  Image Project (optional)
  GCP project whose images are listed first when creating a VM
  my-image-project                

  ✓ Submit  Cancel

  esc cancel

When you change the directory, vmup shows what lives at the source and destination and offers to migrate your existing projects and disks or just switch, with a review screen before anything moves.

Data directory

By default vmup stores everything under ~/.vmup:

~/.vmup/
├── bin/                  # auto-installed Terraform binary
├── projects/<vm-name>/   # per-VM Terraform state and variables
├── disks/<disk-name>/    # per-disk Terraform state and variables
└── settings.json         # vmup settings

The settings screen lets you point projects/ and disks/ at a custom location — for example a synced or backed-up directory, or a larger volume. The setting is persisted in ~/.vmup/settings.json:

{
  "data_dir": "/path/to/custom/dir"
}

Moving existing state

The Terraform state files under projects/ and disks/ are how vmup tracks your cloud resources. When changing the data directory, prefer Migrate & switch so that state moves with it — with Switch only, vmup won't see resources whose state stayed behind (they keep running in GCP regardless; see Troubleshooting).

Image project

The Image Project is an optional GCP project whose images are listed first — above the standard public GCP images, marked with ★ — in the image picker when you create a VM. Use it to surface your own custom images.

• Leave it blank to show only the standard public GCP images (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.).
• Set it to a project you have access to, and its images appear at the top of the picker.

It's persisted in ~/.vmup/settings.json:

{
  "image_project": "my-image-project"
}

Access fallback

If your Google account can't access the configured image project, vmup shows a one-time notice the next time you create a VM, falls back to the standard public images, and clears the setting so it won't try again.

Shipped default: vds-infrastructure

Out of the box the Image Project is preset to vds-infrastructure — the image project maintained by Vindhya Data Science, which hosts the data-science / RStudio images vmup was originally built for.

• If you have access (e.g. Vindhya users), those images appear at the top of the picker automatically — nothing to configure.
• If you don't (most users), the first time you create a VM you'll see a one-time "No access to image project vds-infrastructure" notice. vmup then falls back to the standard public GCP images and clears the preset, so every run after that shows only the standard images. This is expected and harmless — you don't need to do anything.

Set Image Project to a GCP project you have access to (or leave it blank) at any time to override or remove the default.