Quickly Set Up Ubuntu VMs on macOS Using Multipass

Overview

Multipass is an open‑source lightweight VM manager from Canonical. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS and uses native hypervisors (KVM, Hyper‑V, HyperKit) to launch Ubuntu instances with minimal overhead.

Installation on macOS

If Homebrew is installed: brew install --cask multipass Verify the installation:

multipass --version

Creating an Ubuntu instance

List available images: multipass find Launch a VM named vm01 with 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM and 10 GB disk: multipass launch -n vm01 -c 1 -m 1G -d 10G Common launch options: -n, --name: instance name -c, --cpus: number of CPU cores (default 1) -m, --mem: memory size (default 1G) -d, --disk: disk size (default 5G)

Managing the instance

Listing instances

multipass list

Typical output shows name, state, IPv4 address and image.

Executing commands

# Run a command inside vm01
multipass exec vm01 -- pwd
# Open an interactive shell
multipass shell vm01

Root access

# Set root password
sudo passwd
# Switch to root
su root

Package management (Ubuntu)

# Update package index
apt-get update
# Install nginx
apt-get install -y nginx

Configuration files appear under /etc/nginx.

Data volume mounting

Mount a host directory into the VM (similar to Docker): multipass mount /path/on/host vm01:/path/in/vm Unmount: multipass umount vm01 Transfer a single file:

multipass transfer localfile.txt vm01:/home/ubuntu/

Automating instance configuration

Use --cloud-init with a cloud‑init YAML file. Example config.yaml installs Node.js on first boot:

#cloud-config
runcmd:
  - curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
  - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Launch with cloud‑init:

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

Lifecycle commands

multipass start vm01

multipass stop vm01

multipass delete vm01

– marks for deletion multipass purge vm01 – removes permanently

Additional notes

Multipass only provides Ubuntu images, which may be a limitation for users preferring other distributions. All commands shown assume a default Ubuntu 20.04 LTS image, but other releases (e.g., 18.04, 21.04) are available via multipass find.