Introduction
Ubuntu VM runs on Windows/Mac/Linux. Multipass can launch and run virtual machines and configure them with cloud-init like a public cloud. Prototype your cloud launches locally for free. It acts as a similar to Oracle Virtual Box or Docker engine
Install multipass
Im testing on a macOS Ventura 13.1, the following procedure helps us to install and test the multipass Ubuntu VM.
Installation steps on a Mac
Method1 – installer
Download the multipass package from the Ubuntu official site, need to run the application with admin privileges
Download URL for macOS – https://multipass.run/download/macos
Once download open the installer and install the package
Method2 – brew
Using brew we can install the multipass
$ brew install --cask multipass
To Uninstall
$ brew uninstall multipass # or $ brew uninstall --zap multipass # to destroy all data
Install on Linux
To install Multipass on a Linux system, run the following command:
$ sudo snap install multipass
Launch the multipass
Now we are ready to launch the multipass, to launch the new instance execute the below command
Clicking this button open shell, it launches a new virtual machine (instance), named primary, with 1GB of RAM, 5GB of disk, and 1 CPU; installs the most recent Ubuntu LTS release. We can see the below details printed on the shell.
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-60-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
System information as of Fri Feb 17 18:23:03 IST 2023
System load: 0.0
Usage of /: 34.3% of 4.67GB
Memory usage: 22%
Swap usage: 0%
Processes: 110
Users logged in: 1
IPv4 address for enp0s2: 192.168.64.2
IPv6 address for enp0s2: fdaf:d068:ef6e:eb09:c83b:ccff:fe0e:1069
* Introducing Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications.
Receive updates to over 25,000 software packages with your
Ubuntu Pro subscription. Free for personal use.
https://ubuntu.com/pro
Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.
3 updates can be applied immediately.
2 of these updates are standard security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable
Enable ESM Apps to receive additional future security updates.
See https://ubuntu.com/esm or run: sudo pro status
Last login: Fri Feb 17 17:32:19 2023 from 192.168.64.1
ubuntu@primary:~$
Launch new instance
Multipass has a great feature to help us get started creating customised instances. Let’s open a terminal and run the command multipass find. This shows us a list of all of the images we can launch through Multipass currently.
Multipass helps us to create instances with customisation, open the terminal and run the multipass find command to display the publicly available images, we can also launch our own images.
find the image
$ multipass find 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 18.04 bionic 20230210 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 20.04 focal 20230209 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 22.04 jammy,lts 20230210 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 22.10 kinetic 20230215 Ubuntu 22.10 anbox-cloud-appliance latest Anbox Cloud Appliance charm-dev latest A development and testing environment for charmers docker 0.4 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 $
Let’s launch an instance running Ubuntu 18.04 by executing the command multipass launch 18.04
Now we able to see an instance running which has been named randomly by Multipass, in this case it named as present-alpaca.
Let’s launch an instance running Ubuntu 18.04 by executing the command multipass launch 18.04
Now we able to see an instance running which has been named randomly by Multipass, in this case it named as present-alpaca.
launch instance
$ multipass launch 18.04 Launched: present-alpaca
verify
We can check some few info about our new instance by running the below command:
$ multipass exec present-alpaca -- hostname present-alpaca $
$ multipass exec present-alpaca -- lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS Release: 18.04 Codename: bionic $
Deletion of the instances
If we decide to destroy the instances, execute the below command. Make sure give the correct name for deletion of instances.
$ multipass list Name State IPv4 Image primary Running 192.168.64.2 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS present-alpaca Running 192.168.64.3 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
$ multipass delete present-alpaca
$ multipass list Name State IPv4 Image primary Running 192.168.64.2 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS present-alpaca Deleted -- Not Available
Custom instance
Let’s consider scenario we need to launch instances with RAM and CPU, we need to execute the below command.
$ multipass launch 18.04 --name ccInstance --memory 2G --disk 8G --cpus 2 Launched: ccInstance
Just cross check whether the requirement are correct as per our specifications.
$ multipass info ccInstance Name: ccInstance State: Running IPv4: 192.168.64.4 Release: Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS Image hash: 990376cdb0d0 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) CPU(s): 2 Load: 0.34 0.14 0.05 Disk usage: 1.2GiB out of 7.6GiB Memory usage: 86.2MiB out of 1.9GiB Mounts: --
We create and deleted few instances, lets check that
$ multipass list Name State IPv4 Image primary Running 192.168.64.2 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ccInstance Running 192.168.64.4 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS present-alpaca Deleted -- Not Available
Conclusion
Hope the you got some hands onn about multipass, in the next post we can more about multipass, please like and share the post if you like it.
multipass official site – https://multipass.run/
Also read
Troubleshooting commands in Linux – https://computercarriage.com/2023/02/16/troubleshooting-commands-in-linux/
Docker Container Platform – Part1 – https://computercarriage.com/2020/09/03/docker-container-platform/
