Start up local Docker Machine on OSX automatically.

com.docker.machine.default.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
        <dict>
            <key>PATH</key>
            <string>{{user-path}}</string>
        </dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.docker.machine.default</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>{{docker-machine}}</string>
            <string>start</string>
            <string>default</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</plist>

Start up local Docker Machine on OSX automatically.md

Notice

This script is no longer required with Docker for Mac which includes an option to run Docker at startup and doesn't use docker-machine to administer the local Docker engine.

Requirements

• Docker Machine + Docker
• curl
• A Virtualbox-driven Docker Machine called "default" docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default (this is the default with Docker toolkit).

Usage

$ curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/andystanton/257fab335b242bc2658b/raw/c62ae413a0a45ec5d832fb04065a085a8fb477da/com.docker.machine.default.plist | \
    sed -e "s?{{docker-machine}}?$(which docker-machine)?" \
        -e "s?{{user-path}}?$PATH?" \
    >~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.machine.default.plist && \
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.machine.default.plist

In my case, I want to start the docker-machine when booting (not when user logging in), so I put com.docker.machine.dev.plist into /Library/LaunchDaemons/, add

<key>UserName</key>
<string>{{ your_username }}</string>

as running docker-machine as root will throw Host does not exist: "default"

beside that, change file's owner to root:wheel

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.docker.machine.dev.plist

then everything is fine.

This worked great for me. Thanks, @andystanton!

Good job, thanks @andystanton!

For homebrew users:
brew services start docker-machine

In my case the entire process of starting up the docker-machine was slow... because of that I was forced to add the following:
while [ "$(docker-machine ls --filter name=default -f '{{.Error}}')" != "" ] && [ "$(docker-machine ls --filter name=default -f '{{.URL}}')" == "" ]; do sleep 1; done; eval $(docker-machine env default);
in
.bash_profile