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How to install Multipass

This guide explains how to install and manage Multipass on your system.

Select the tab corresponding to your operating system (e.g. Linux) to display the relevant content in each section. Your decision will stick until you select another OS from the drop-down menu.

Check prerequisites

Multipass for Linux is published as a snap package, available on the Snap Store. Before you can use it, you need to install snapd. snapd is included in Ubuntu by default.

Install

To install Multipass, run the following command:

snap install multipass

You can also use the edge channel to get the latest development build:

snap install multipass --edge

Make sure you’re part of the group that Multipass gives write access to its socket (sudo in this case, but it may also be wheel or admin, depending on your distribution).

  1. Run this command to check which group is used by the Multipass socket:

    ls -l /var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket

    The output will be similar to the following:

    srw-rw---- 1 root sudo 0 Dec 19 09:47 /var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket

  2. Run the groups command to make sure you are a member of that group (in our example, “sudo”):

    groups | grep sudo

    The output will be similar to the following:

    adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin

You can view more information on the snap package using the snap info command:

snap info multipass

For example:

name:      multipass
summary:   Instant Ubuntu VMs
publisher: Canonical✓
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/multipass
contact:   https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/multipass/issues/new
license:   GPL-3.0
description: |
  Multipass is a tool to launch and manage VMs on Windows, Mac and Linux that simulates a cloud
  environment with support for cloud-init. Get Ubuntu on-demand with clean integration to your IDE
  and version control on your native platform.
  ...
commands:
  - multipass.gui
  - multipass
services:
  multipass.multipassd: simple, enabled, active
snap-id:      mA11087v6dR3IEcQLgICQVjuvhUUBUKM
tracking:     latest/candidate
refresh-date: 5 days ago, at 10:13 CEST
channels:
  latest/stable:    1.3.0                 2020-06-17 (2205) 228MB -
  latest/candidate: 1.3.0                 2020-06-17 (2205) 228MB -
  latest/beta:      1.3.0-dev.17+gf89e1db 2020-04-28 (2019) 214MB -
  latest/edge:      1.4.0-dev.83+g149f10a 2020-06-17 (2216) 228MB -
installed:          1.3.0                            (2205) 228MB -

Alternatively, you can also check your preferred package manager to see if it provides Multipass, although this option is not officially supported.

Run

You’ve installed Multipass. Time to run your first commands! Use multipass version to check your version or multipass launch to create your first instance.

Upgrade

As the installation happened via snap, you don’t need to worry about upgrading—it will be done automatically.

Uninstall

To uninstall Multipass, run the following command:

snap remove multipass

Errors or typos? Topics missing? Hard to read? Let us know or open an issue on GitHub.

Contributors: @saviq , @townsend , @sowasred2012 , @ya-bo-ng , @shuuji3 , @henryschreineriii , @sven , @nick3499 , @undefynd , @sparkiegeek , @nottrobin , @tmihoc , @nhart , @luisp , @sharder996 , @aaryan-porwal , @andreitoterman , @ricab , @gzanchi , @bagustris

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Last updated 2 months ago. Help improve this document in the forum.