Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux, Windows and macOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and QEMU on macOS to run the VM with minimal overhead. It can also use VirtualBox on Windows and macOS. 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.
| Service | Status |
|---|---|
| CI | |
| Snap |  |
| Codecov |  |
On Linux it's available as a snap:
sudo snap install multipass
For macOS, you can download the installers from GitHub or use Homebrew:
# Note, this may require you to enter your password for some sudo operations during install
# Mac OS users may need to disable their firewall to launch a multipass instance successfully
brew install --cask multipass
On Windows, download the installer from GitHub.
$ multipass find
Image Aliases Version Description
core core16 20200213 Ubuntu Core 16
core18 20200210 Ubuntu Core 18
16.04 xenial 20200721 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
18.04 bionic,lts 20200717 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04 focal 20200720 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
daily:20.10 devel,groovy 20200721 Ubuntu 20.10
$ multipass launch ubuntu
Launching dancing-chipmunk...
Downloading Ubuntu 18.04 LTS..........
Launched: dancing chipmunk
$ 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
$ 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)
CPU(s): 1
Load: 0.97 0.30 0.10
Disk usage: 1.1G out of 4.7G
Memory usage: 85.1M out of 985.4M
$ 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... ;)
$ 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
$ multipass stop dancing-chipmunk
$ 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
multipass help
multipass help <command>
Here's a set of steps to build and run your own build of Multipass. Please note that the following instructions are for building Multipass for Linux only. These instructions do not support building packages for macOS or Windows systems.
cd <multipass>
apt install devscripts equivs
mk-build-deps -s sudo -i
cd <multipass>
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
First, install multipass's runtime dependencies. On amd64 architecture, you can achieve that with:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libgl1 libpng16-16 libqt6core6 libqt6gui6 \
libqt6network6 libqt6widgets6 libxml2 libvirt0 dnsmasq-base \
dnsmasq-utils qemu-system-x86 qemu-utils libslang2 iproute2 \
iptables iputils-ping libatm1 libxtables12 xterm
Then run multipass's daemon:
sudo <multipass>/build/bin/multipassd &
Copy the desktop file multipass clients expect to find in your home:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/multipass/
cp <multipass>/data/multipass.gui.autostart.desktop ~/.local/share/multipass/
Optionally, enable auto-complete in bash:
source <multipass>/completions/bash/multipass
Finally, use multipass's clients:
<multipass>/build/bin/multipass launch --name foo # CLI client
<multipass>/build/bin/multipass.gui # GUI client