Multipass launch

The multipass launch command without any argument will create and start a new instance based on the default image, using a random generated name, you can configure it using --name option. As of August 2020 not renaming option is available.

• https://multipass.run/docs/launch-command

multipass launch --name ubuntu-vm
launch failed: failed to download from 'http://cloud- images.ubuntu.com/releases/server/releases/bionic/release-20200129.1/ubuntu-18.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img': Network timeout

• multipass launch lts
• multipass launch lts --name TEST
• multipass launch 20.10
• multipass launch groovy
• multipass launch --cpus 2 --mem 8G --disk 25G --name MY_NEW_VM && multipass connect MY_NEW_VM
• multipass launch --cpus 2 --mem 8G --disk 25G --name MY_NEW_VM
• multipass launch --cpus 2 --mem 8G --name MY_NEW_VM
• multipass launch --cpus 2 --name MY_NEW_VM
• multipass launch --name MY_NEW_VM 20.04

• multipass launch --name ubuntu-lts-custom --cloud-init cloud-config.yaml

• To find available images: multipass find

Examples

multipass launch groovy
Launched: open-kit

multipass launch 20.10 --name my_VM
Launched: my_VM

It will create a 5GB Ubuntu machine with 1 CPU and 1 GB memory

--help

multipass launch --help
Usage: multipass launch [options] [[<remote:>]<image> | <url>]
Create and start a new instance.

Options:
  -h, --help           Display this help
  -v, --verbose        Increase logging verbosity. Repeat the 'v' in the short
                       option for more detail. Maximum verbosity is obtained
                       with 4 (or more) v's, i.e. -vvvv.
  -c, --cpus <cpus>    Number of CPUs to allocate.
                       Minimum: 1, default: 1.
  -d, --disk <disk>    Disk space to allocate. Positive integers, in bytes, or
                       with K, M, G suffix.
                       Minimum: 512M, default: 5G.
  -m, --mem <mem>      Amount of memory to allocate. Positive integers, in
                       bytes, or with K, M, G suffix.
                       Minimum: 128M, default: 1G.
  -n, --name <name>    Name for the instance. If it is 'primary' (the
                       configured primary instance name), the user's home
                       directory is mounted inside the newly launched instance,
                       in 'Home'.
  --cloud-init <file>  Path to a user-data cloud-init configuration, or '-' for
                       stdin

Arguments:
  image                Optional image to launch. If omitted, then the default
                       Ubuntu LTS will be used.
                       <remote> can be either ‘release’ or ‘daily‘. If <remote>
                       is omitted, ‘release’ will be used.
                       <image> can be a partial image hash or an Ubuntu release
                       version, codename or alias.
                       <url> is a custom image URL that is in http://, https://,
                       or file:// format.

With errors

multipass launch lts
launch failed: The following errors occurred:
Instance stopped while starting

multipass launch
launch failed: CPU does not support KVM extensions.

Under macOS multipass or VMware VMs.

multipass launch
launch failed: cannot connect to the multipass socket
Please ensure multipassd is running and '/var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket' is accessible

Related commands

• multipass find
• multipass list
• multipass connect
• multipass delete VM_NAME --purge or multipass purge
• virtinst: virt-install
• virt-builder
• lxc launch
• apt update -y && apt upgrade -y
• uvt-kvm create

See also

• Multipass, MULTIPASS_STORAGE, /Library/Logs/Multipass/multipassd.log, /var/run/multipass_socket, Multipass releases, multipassd
• Ubuntu, Ubuntu releases, snap, MAAS, PPA, Canonical Livepatch, Ubuntu Advantage, netplan, multipass, Landscape, Subiquity, lsb_release, Ubuntu MATE, Wayland

https://multipass.run/docs/launch-command

https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/255