What is multipass?

Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux and MacOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu with a single command or hotkey. It uses KVM on Linux and HyperKit on MacOS to run the VM with minimal overhead. Multipass will fetch images for you and keep them up to date.

Since it supports metadata for cloud-init, you can simulate a small cloud deployment on your laptop or workstation.

Install Multipass

On Linux it's available as a snap:

sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic

For MacOS we provide installers on GitHub.

Usage

Find available images

$ multipass find
IMAGE  ALIASES         VERSION   DESCRIPTION
core                   20180419  Ubuntu Core 16
14.04  t, trusty       20181203  Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
16.04  x, xenial       20181207  Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
18.04  b, bionic, lts  20181207  Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Launch a fresh instance of the current Ubuntu LTS

$ multipass launch ubuntu
Launching dancing-chipmunk...
Downloading Ubuntu 18.04 LTS..........
Launched: dancing chipmunk

Check out the running instances

$ multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Release
dancing-chipmunk        RUNNING           10.125.174.247   Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
live-naiad              RUNNING           10.125.174.243   Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
snapcraft-asciinema     STOPPED           --               Ubuntu Snapcraft builder for Core 18

Learn more about the VM instance you just launched

$ multipass info dancing-chipmunk
Name:           dancing-chipmunk
State:          RUNNING
IPv4:           10.125.174.247
Release:        Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Image hash:     19e9853d8267 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
Load:           0.97 0.30 0.10
Disk usage:     1.1G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   85.1M out of 985.4M

Connect to a running instance

$ multipass shell dancing-chipmunk
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)

...

Don't forget to logout (or Ctrl-D) or you may find yourself heading all the way down the Inception levels... ;)

Run commands inside an instance from outside

$ multipass exec dancing-chipmunk -- lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:  Ubuntu
Description:     Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release:         18.04
Codename:        bionic

Stop an instance to save resources

$ multipass stop dancing-chipmunk

Delete the instance

$ multipass delete dancing-chipmunk

It will now show up as deleted:

Name                    State             IPv4             Release
snapcraft-asciinema     STOPPED           --               Ubuntu Snapcraft builder for Core 18
dancing-chipmunk        DELETED           --               Not Available

And when you want to completely get rid of it:

$ multipass purge

Get help


multipass help
multipass help <command>

Get involved!

Here's a set of steps to build and run your own build of multipass:

Build Dependencies

cd <multipass>
apt install devscripts equivs
mk-build-deps -s sudo -i

Building

cd <multipass>
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make

Running multipass daemon and client

sudo <multipass>/build/bin/multipassd &
<multipass>/build/bin/multipass launch --name foo

markshuttle / multipass