How to Quickly Set Up Ubuntu VMs with Multipass: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

Multipass

Multipass is a lightweight command‑line tool for managing virtual machines on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Getting Started

Download and install Multipass for your operating system (the example uses Windows).

After installation, check the version:

$ multipass version

Create an Ubuntu VM

List available Ubuntu images: $ multipass find Launch a new instance named dg:

$ multipass launch --name dg
Launched: dg

Verify the Ubuntu version inside the VM:

$ multipass exec dg -- lsb_release -d
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

Manage the VM

List VMs

Name          State    IPv4          Image
 dg           Running  192.168.24.5  Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Show detailed info

$ multipass info --all
Name:           dg
State:          Running
IPv4:           192.168.24.5
Release:        Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Image hash:     fe3030933742 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
Load:           0.00 0.00 0.00
Disk usage:     1.5G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   112.1M out of 985.7M

Enter the VM shell $ multipass shell dg Pause and restart

# Pause
$ multipass stop dg
# Start
$ multipass start dg

Delete and purge

# Delete (marks for removal)
$ multipass delete dg
# Purge (removes completely)
$ multipass purge dg

Automate Configuration

Use --cloud-init with a YAML file to run commands on first boot:

$ multipass launch --name ubuntu --cloud-init config.yaml

Example config.yaml:

#cloud-config
runcmd:
  - curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
  - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
  - wget https://releases.leanapp.cn/leancloud/lean-cli/releases/download/v0.21.0/lean-cli-x64.deb
  - sudo dpkg -i lean-cli-x64.deb

Conclusion

Multipass provides a fast way to spin up Ubuntu VMs for testing, small database clusters, or other Linux experiments. Its limitation is that it only supports Ubuntu images, as it is developed by Canonical.