How to create a VM with Multipass¶
Multipass is the recommended method for creating Ubuntu VMs on Ubuntu. It’s designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command, and it works on Linux, Windows and macOS.
On Linux it’s available as a snap:
sudo snap install multipass
If you’re running an older version of Ubuntu where snapd isn’t pre-installed, you will need to install it first:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
Find available images¶
To find available images you can use the multipass find command, which will produce a list like this:
Image Aliases Version Description
snapcraft:core18 18.04 20201111 Snapcraft builder for Core 18
snapcraft:core20 20.04 20210921 Snapcraft builder for Core 20
snapcraft:core22 22.04 20220426 Snapcraft builder for Core 22
snapcraft:devel 20221128 Snapcraft builder for the devel series
core core16 20200818 Ubuntu Core 16
core18 20211124 Ubuntu Core 18
18.04 bionic 20221117 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04 focal 20221115.1 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
22.04 jammy,lts 20221117 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
22.10 kinetic 20221101 Ubuntu 22.10
daily:23.04 devel,lunar 20221127 Ubuntu 23.04
appliance:adguard-home 20200812 Ubuntu AdGuard Home Appliance
appliance:mosquitto 20200812 Ubuntu Mosquitto Appliance
appliance:nextcloud 20200812 Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance
appliance:openhab 20200812 Ubuntu openHAB Home Appliance
appliance:plexmediaserver 20200812 Ubuntu Plex Media Server Appliance
anbox-cloud-appliance latest Anbox Cloud Appliance
charm-dev latest A development and testing environment for charmers
docker latest A Docker environment with Portainer and related tools
jellyfin latest Jellyfin is a Free Software Media System that puts you in control of managing and streaming your media.
minikube latest minikube is local Kubernetes
Launch a fresh instance of the Ubuntu Jammy (22.04) LTS¶
You can launch a fresh instance by specifying either the image name from the list (in this example, 22.04) or using an alias, if the image has one.
$ multipass launch 22.04
Launched: cleansing-guanaco
This command is equivalent to: multipass launch jammy or multipass launch lts in the list above. It will launch an instance based on the specified image, and provide it with a random name – in this case, cleansing-guanaco.
Check out the running instances¶
You can check out the currently running instance(s) by using the “multipass list` command:
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
cleansing-guanaco Running 10.140.26.17 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Learn more about the VM instance you just launched¶
You can use the multipass info command to find out more details about the VM instance parameters:
$ multipass info cleansing-guanaco
Name: cleansing-guanaco
State: Running
IPv4: 10.140.26.17
Release: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Image hash: dc5b5a43c267 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
Load: 0.45 0.19 0.07
Disk usage: 1.4G out of 4.7G
Memory usage: 168.3M out of 969.5M
Mounts: --
Connect to a running instance¶
To enter the VM you created, use the shell command:
$ multipass shell cleansing-guanaco
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64)
(...)
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~$
Disconnect from the instance¶
Don’t forget to log out (or Ctrl + D) when you are done, or you may find yourself heading all the way down the Inception levels…
Run commands inside an instance from outside¶
$ multipass exec cleansing-guanaco -- lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy
Stop or start an instance¶
You can stop an instance to save resources using the stop command:
$ multipass stop cleansing-guanaco
You can start it back up again using the start command:
$ multipass start cleansing-guanaco
Delete the instance¶
Once you are finished with the instance, you can delete it as follows:
$ multipass delete cleansing-guanaco
It will now show up as deleted when you use the list command:
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
cleansing-guanaco Deleted -- Not Available
And when you want to completely get rid of it (and any other deleted instances), you can use the purge command:
$ multipass purge
Which we can check again using list:
$ multipass list
No instances found.
Integrate with the rest of your virtualization¶
You might have other virtualization already based on libvirt, either through using the similar older uvtool or through the more common virt-manager.
You might, for example, want those guests to be on the same bridge to communicate with each other, or if you need access to the graphical output for some reason.
Fortunately it is possible to integrate this by using the libvirt backend of Multipass:
$ sudo multipass set local.driver=libvirt
Now when you start a guest you can also access it via tools like virt-manager or virsh:
$ multipass launch lts
Launched: engaged-amberjack
$ virsh list
Id Name State
----------------------------------------------------
15 engaged-amberjack running
For more detailed and comprehensive instructions on changing your drivers, refer to the Multipass drivers documentation.
Get help¶
You can use the following commands on the CLI:
multipass help
multipass help <command>
multipass help --all
Or, check out the Multipass documentation for more details on how to use it.