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The multipass shell command will open a shell prompt on an instance. Without any arguments, it will open the shell prompt of the primary instance. You can also pass the name of an existing instance. If the instance is not running, it will automatically be started. For the case of the primary instance, if it doesn’t exist yet, it will be created.
For the primary instance:
$ multipass shell
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-72-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
System information as of Thu Dec 19 16:11:12 EST 2019
System load: 0.0 Processes: 87
Usage of /: 24.0% of 4.67GB Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 13% IP address for ens4: 10.3.19.167
Swap usage: 0%
11 packages can be updated.
3 updates are security updates.
Last login: Thu Dec 19 16:03:37 2019 from 10.3.19.1
ubuntu@primary:~$
For an instance named bionic:
$ multipass shell bionic
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-72-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
System information as of Thu Dec 19 16:11:12 EST 2019
System load: 0.0 Processes: 87
Usage of /: 24.0% of 4.67GB Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 13% IP address for ens4: 10.3.19.167
Swap usage: 0%
11 packages can be updated.
3 updates are security updates.
Last login: Thu Dec 19 16:03:37 2019 from 10.3.19.1
ubuntu@bionic:~$
The full multipass shell --help output explains the available options:
$ multipass shell --help
Usage: multipass shell [options] [<name>]
Open a shell prompt on the instance.
Options:
-h, --help Displays help on commandline 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.
--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:
name Name of the instance to open a shell on. If omitted,
'primary' (the configured primary instance name) will be
assumed. If the instance is not running, an attempt is
made to start it (see `start` for more info).