Multipass

wikipedia:multipass (December 2019 v1.0) allows to create and manage Ubuntu virtual machine instances on Linux, Windows and macOS. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and HyperKit on macOS, supported since July 2018, to run the VM with minimal overhead. Since August 2020 (v1.4) it also included bridged networking support.

• Binaries: multipass, multipass-gui
• Linux installation: sudo snap install multipass
• MacOS Installation: brew cask install multipass

Usage

• multipass list
• multipass connect
• multipass start VM_NAME
• multipass stop VM_NAME
• multipass launch --name YourName (to create a new one vm)
  • multipass launch --cpus 2 --name MY_NEW_VM
  • multipass launch --cpus 2 --mem 8G --name MY_NEW_VM
• multipass shell VM_NAME
• multipass find
• multipass info VM_INSTANCE_NAME
• multipass delete VM_INSTANCE_NAME
• multipass purge
• multipass mount
• multipass transfer (copy files between host and instances)
• multipass set

macOS

• macOS files location: /var/root/Library/Application Support/multipassd/vault/instances/
• Configuration file: /var/root/Library/Application Support/multipassd/multipassd-vm-instances.json

Setting MULTIPASS_STORAGE system variable will change where data/images are stored since multipass 1.5.0 (October 2020)

Ubuntu

• /var/snap/multipass/common/data/multipassd/vault/instances/

Logs

• macOS: /Library/Logs/Multipass/multipassd.log

Know limitations

• As of April 2021 multipass do not allow for custom IP configuration https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/1293
• As of October 2021 multipass do not allow to rename instances https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/255
• As of April 2021 multipass do now have port forwarding capabitilies. https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/309

Activities

1. Install and create you first Ubuntu VM with Multipass
2. Read Multipass releases/versions/Changelog
3. Modify number of CPU on an existing instance
4. Review most popular StackOverflow multipass questions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/multipass?tab=Votes

Related terms

• brew cask install xquartz
• virt-install
• libvirtd
• LXD container manager
• Vagrant
• MULTIPASS_STORAGE

See also

• XQuartz
• Multipass, MULTIPASS_STORAGE, /Library/Logs/Multipass/multipassd.log, /var/run/multipass_socket, Multipass releases, multipassd
• Virtualization: KVM, VirtualBox, multipass, containers, Vagrant, Packer, Hyper-V, VMware, Parallels, Bhyve, Virtual machine

https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/multipass

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/announcing-multipass-1-0-0-first-stable-release/13704

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/multipass-now-available-for-macos/6824

https://github.com/canonical/multipass/releases/tag/v1.4.0

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/multipass-now-available-for-macos/6824