Create an instance

Multipass Docs archive
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This page is no longer maintained. Please refer to How to create an instance.

See also: launch, Instance

This document demonstrates various ways to create an instance with Multipass. While every method is a one-liner involving the command launch, each showcases a different option that you an use to get exactly the instance that you want.

Contents:

Create an instance

See also: launch, info

To create an instance with Multipass, execute:

$ multipass launch
…
Launched: keen-yak

This has launched a new instance, which has been randomly named keen-yak. In particular, when we run multipass info, we find out that it is an Ubuntu LTS release, namely 18.04, with 1GB RAM, 1 CPU, 5GB of disk:

$ multipass info keen-yak
Name:           keen-yak
State:          RUNNING
IPv4:           10.140.94.253
Release:        Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Image hash:     d53116c67a41 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
Load:           0.00 0.12 0.18
Disk usage:     1.1G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   71.6M out of 985.4M

Create an instance with a specific image

See also: find, launch <image>, info

To find out what images are available, run:

$ multipass find
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
snapcraft:devel                               20220525         Snapcraft builder for the devel series
core                        core16            20200818         Ubuntu Core 16
core18                                        20211124         Ubuntu Core 18
18.04                       bionic            20220523         Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04                       focal,lts         20220505         Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
21.10                       impish            20220309         Ubuntu 21.10
22.04                       jammy             20220506         Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
daily:22.10                 devel,kinetic     20220522         Ubuntu 22.10
appliance:adguard-home                        20200812         Ubuntu AdGuard Home Appliance
appliance:mosquitto                           20200812         Ubuntu Mosquitto Appliance
appliance:nextcloud                           20200812         Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance
appliance:openhab                             20200812         Ubuntu openHAB Home Appliance
appliance:plexmediaserver                     20200812         Ubuntu Plex Media Server Appliance
anbox-cloud-appliance                         latest           Anbox Cloud Appliance
charm-dev                                     latest           A development and testing environment for charmers
docker                                        latest           A Docker environment with Portainer and related tools
minikube                                      latest           minikube is local Kubernetes

To launch an instance with a specific image, pass the image name or alias to multipass launch:

$ multipass launch kinetic
Launched: tenacious-mink

multipass info confirms that we’ve launched an instance of the selected image.

$ multipass info tenacious-mink
Name:           tenacious-mink
State:          Running
IPv4:           10.49.93.29
Release:        Ubuntu Kinetic Kudu (development branch)
Image hash:     5cb61a7d834d (Ubuntu 22.10)
Load:           0.10 0.06 0.02
Disk usage:     1.4G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   161.8M out of 971.2M

Create an instance with a custom name

See also: launch ... --name

To launch an instance with a specific name, add the --name option to the command line:

multipass launch kinetic --name helpful-duck
Launched: helpful-duck

Create an instance with custom CPU number, disk, and RAM

See also: launch ... --cpu ... --disk ... --memory ...

A custom number of CPUs, disk and RAM size is specified using the following arguments:

$ multipass launch --cpu 4 --disk 20G --memory 8G
Launched: giving-catfish

Create an instance with primary status

See also: launch ... --name primary

An instance can obtain the primary status at creation time if its name is primary:

$ multipass launch kinetic --name primary
Launched: primary

See the documentation for primary instance for more information.

Create an instance with multiple network interfaces

See also: launch ... --network

[since version 1.6.0]

Multipass can launch instances with additional network interfaces, via the --network option. That is complemented by the networks command, to find available host networks to bridge with.

This is supported only for images with cloud-init support for Version 2 network config, which in turn requires netplan to be installed. So, from 17.10 and core 16 onward, except for snapcraft:core16. And then only in the following scenarios:

The --network option can be given multiple times, each one requesting an additional network interface (beyond the default one, which is always present). Each use takes an argument specifying the properties of the desired interface:

  • name — the only required value, it identifies the host network to connect the instance’s device to (see networks for possible values)
  • mode — either auto (the default) or manual; with auto, the instance will attempt automatic network configuration
  • mac — a custom MAC address to use for the device

These properties can be specified in the format <key>=<value>,…. but a simpler form with only <name> is available for the most common use-case. Here is an example:

$ multipass launch --network en0 --network name=bridge0,mode=manual
Launched: upbeat-whipsnake

$ multipass exec upbeat-whipsnake -- ip -br address show scope global
enp0s3           UP             10.0.2.15/24
enp0s8           UP             192.168.1.146/24
enp0s9           DOWN

$ ping -c1 192.168.1.146  # elsewhere in the same network
PING 192.168.1.146 (192.168.1.146): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.146: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.378 ms
[...]

In the example above, we got the following interfaces inside the instance:

  • enp0s3 — the default interface, that the instance can use to reach the outside world and which Multipass uses to communicate with the instance;
  • enp0s8 — the interface that is connected to en0 on the host and which is automatically configured;
  • enp0s9 — the interface that is connected to bridge0 on the host, ready for manual configuration.

Routing

Extra interfaces are configured with a higher metric (200) than the default one (100). So, by default the instance will only route through them if they’re a better match for the destination IP:

$ multipass exec upbeat-whipsnake -- ip route
default via 10.0.2.2 dev enp0s3 proto dhcp src 10.0.2.15 metric 100
default via 192.168.1.1 dev enp0s8 proto dhcp src 192.168.1.146 metric 200
10.0.2.0/24 dev enp0s3 proto kernel scope link src 10.0.2.15
10.0.2.2 dev enp0s3 proto dhcp scope link src 10.0.2.15 metric 100
192.168.1.0/24 dev enp0s8 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.146
192.168.1.1 dev enp0s8 proto dhcp scope link src 192.168.1.146 metric 200

$ multipass exec upbeat-whipsnake -- ip route get 91.189.88.181
91.189.88.181 via 10.0.2.2 dev enp0s3 src 10.0.2.15 uid 1000
    cache

$ multipass exec upbeat-whipsnake -- ip route get 192.168.1.13
192.168.1.13 dev enp0s8 src 192.168.1.146 uid 1000
    cache

Create an instance with a custom DNS

In some scenarios the default of using the system-provided DNS will not be sufficient. When that’s the case, you can use the --cloud-init option to the launch command, or modify the networking configuration after the instance started.

The --cloud-init approach

See also: launch ... --cloud-init

To use a custom DNS in your instances, you can use this cloud-init snippet:

#cloud-config
bootcmd:
- printf "[Resolve]\nDNS=8.8.8.8" > /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
- [systemctl, restart, systemd-resolved]

Replace 8.8.8.8 with whatever your preferred DNS server is. You can then launch the instance using the following:

$ multipass launch --cloud-init systemd-resolved.yaml

The netplan.io approach

After the instance booted, you can modify the /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml file, adding the nameservers entry:

network:
  ethernets:
    ens3:
      dhcp4: true
      match:
        macaddress: 52:54:00:fe:52:ee
     set-name: ens3
     nameservers:
       search: [mydomain]
       addresses: [8.8.8.8]

You can then test it:

$ sudo netplan try
Do you want to keep these settings?


Press ENTER before the timeout to accept the new configuration


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