How to remove an instance

See also: Instance

This document demonstrates how to remove an instance, either temporarily or permanently.

Contents:

Move an instance to the ‘recycle bin’

See also: delete, recover

To mark an instance as deleted, run:

$ multipass delete keen-yak

Now, if you list the instances, you will see that it is actually just marked for deletion (or to put it in other words, moved to the recycle bin):

$ multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Release
keen-yak                DELETED           --               Not Available

You can move all instances to the recycle bin at once using the --all option:

$ multipass delete --all

Instances that have been marked as deleted can later be recovered:

$ multipass recover keen-yak
$ multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Release
keen-yak                STOPPED           --               Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Remove an instance permanently

See also: delete, purge

If you want to get rid of all instances in the ‘recycle bin’ for good, you must purge them:

$ multipass delete keen-yak
$ multipass purge
$ multipass list
No instances found.

The purge command does not take an argument. It will permanently remove all instances marked as deleted.

In order to permanently remove only one instance in a single command, you can use:

$ multipass delete --purge keen-yak
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