`multipass launch` command

The multipass launch command without any argument will create and start a new instance based on the default image, using a random generated name:

$ multipass launch
…
Launched: relishing-lionfish

You can then shell into that instance by its name:

$ multipass shell relishing-lionfish
…
multipass@relishing-lionfish:~$ 

The full multipass help launch output explains the available options:

$  multipass help launch
Usage: multipass launch [options] [[<remote:>]<image> | <url>]
Create and start a new instance.

Options:
  -h, --help                            Displays help on commandline options.
  --help-all                            Displays help including Qt specific
                                        options.
  -v, --verbose                         Increase logging verbosity. Repeat the
                                        'v' in the short option for more detail.
                                        Maximum verbosity is obtained with 4 (or
                                        more) v's, i.e. -vvvv.
  -c, --cpus <cpus>                     Number of CPUs to allocate.
                                        Minimum: 1, default: 1.
  -d, --disk <disk>                     Disk space to allocate. Positive
                                        integers, in bytes, or with K, M, G
                                        suffix.
                                        Minimum: 512M, default: 5G.
  -m, --memory <memory>                 Amount of memory to allocate. Positive
                                        integers, in bytes, or decimals, with K,
                                        M, G suffix.
                                        Minimum: 128M, default: 1G.
  -n, --name <name>                     Name for the instance. If it is
                                        'primary' (the configured primary
                                        instance name), the user's home
                                        directory is mounted inside the newly
                                        launched instance, in 'Home'.
  --cloud-init <file> | <url>           Path or URL to a user-data cloud-init
                                        configuration, or '-' for stdin
  --network <spec>                      Add a network interface to the
                                        instance, where <spec> is in the
                                        "key=value,key=value" format, with the
                                        following keys available:
                                         name: the network to connect to
                                        (required), use the networks command for
                                        a list of possible values, or use
                                        'bridged' to use the interface
                                        configured via `multipass set
                                        local.bridged-network`.
                                         mode: auto|manual (default: auto)
                                         mac: hardware address (default:
                                        random).
                                        You can also use a shortcut of "<name>"
                                        to mean "name=<name>".
  --bridged                             Adds one `--network bridged` network.
  --mount <local-path>:<instance-path>  Mount a local directory inside the
                                        instance. If <instance-path> is omitted,
                                        the mount point will be the same as the
                                        absolute path of <local-path>
  --timeout <timeout>                   Maximum time, in seconds, to wait for
                                        the command to complete. Note that some
                                        background operations may continue
                                        beyond that. By default, instance
                                        startup and initialization is limited to
                                        5 minutes each.

Arguments:
  image                                 Optional image to launch. If omitted,
                                        then the default Ubuntu LTS will be
                                        used.
                                        <remote> can be either ‘release’ or
                                        ‘daily‘. If <remote> is omitted,
                                        ‘release’ will be used.
                                        <image> can be a partial image hash or
                                        an Ubuntu release version, codename or
                                        alias.
                                        <url> is a custom image URL that is in
                                        http://, https://, or file:// format.

The only, optional, positional argument is the image to launch an instance from. See the multipass find documentation for information on what images are available. It’s also possible to provide a full URL to the image (use file:// for an image available on the host running multipassd).

You can change the resources made available to the instance by passing any of --cpu, --disk, --memory options, allowing for more CPU cores, disk space or RAM, respectively.

If you want your instance to have a name of your choice, use --name. It has to be unique, two instances can’t share the same name.

By passing a filename or an URL to --cloud-init, you can provide “user data” to cloud-init to customize the instance on first boot. See their documentation for examples.

The --network option allows launching instances with additional network interfaces. [since version 1.6.0]

Passing --bridged and --network bridged are shortcuts to --network <name>, where <name> is configured via multipass set local.bridged-interface. [since version 1.7.0]

The --mount option allows mounting several folders in the instance by calling the mount command after the instances is launched. It can be specified multiple times, with different mount paths. [since version 1.10.0]

Use --timeout if you need to change how long Multipass waits for the machine to boot and initialize. [since version 1.7.0]

Last updated 8 months ago.