Ubuntu VMs with multipass

Install multipass

sudo snap install multipass
# for OSX
brew install --cask multipass

Some examples

Launch a VM (by default you get the current Ubuntu LTS)

multipass launch --name foo

run a command in a running VM

multipass exec foo -- lsb_release -a

use cloud-init in your VM

multipass launch -n bar --cloud-init cloud-config.yaml

See your instances

multipass list

Stop and start instances

multipass stop foo bar

multipass start foo

Clean up what you don’t need

multipass delete bar

multipass purge

Find alternate images to launch with multipass

multipass find

Use multipass with libvirt

To use libvirt you need to

snap connect multipass:libvirt

Then you will need to switch the multipass driver

# first stop all running instances
multipass stop --all

sudo multipass set local.driver=libvirt

in case you want to swithc back your configuration

# stop all instances again
multipass stop --all

# and switch back to the qemu driver
sudo multipass set local.driver=qemu

Use Docker in OSX

To use docker on OSX you can use the docker multipass instance.

multipass launch docker

then,

multipass exec docker docker

I use a multipass alias to have docker available directly from OSX

multipass alias docker:docker
export PATH=$HOME/Library/Application Support/multipass/bin

Now you can test that everything is working fine

docker run hello-world
Unable to find image 'hello-world:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/hello-world
7050e35b49f5: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:18a657d0cc1c7d0678a3fbea8b7eb4918bba25968d3e1b0adebfa71caddbc346
Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

To generate this message, Docker took the following steps:
 1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon.
 2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub.
    (arm64v8)
 3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the
    executable that produces the output you are currently reading.
 4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it
    to your terminal.

To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with:
 $ docker run -it ubuntu bash

Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker ID:
 https://hub.docker.com/

For more examples and ideas, visit:
 https://docs.docker.com/get-started/

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