The multipass stop command without any argument will stop the primary instance (and fail, if it doesn’t exist). You can also pass one or more instance names or the --all option to stop more instances at the same time.
Only instances in Running status can be stopped.
Stopped instances can be started again with multipass start.
You can use the --force option (available starting from Multipass version 1.14) to stop the instance when it is in a non-responsive, unknown or suspended state. It can also be used with the --all option to stop all instances forcefully.
The full multipass help stop output explains the available options:
Usage: multipass stop [options] [<name> ...]
Stop the named instances. Exits with return code 0
if successful.
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.
--all Stop all instances
-t, --time <time> Time from now, in minutes, to delay shutdown of the
instance
-c, --cancel Cancel a pending delayed shutdown
--force Force the instance to shut down immediately. Warning: This
could potentially corrupt a running instance, so use with
caution.
Arguments:
name Names of instances to stop. If omitted, and without the
--all option, 'primary' will be assumed.
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