Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux and MacOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu with a single command or hotkey. It uses KVM on Linux and HyperKit on MacOS to run the VM with minimal overhead. Multipass will fetch images for you and keep them up to date.
Since it supports metadata for cloud-init, you can simulate a small cloud deployment on your laptop or workstation.
On Linux it's available as a snap:
sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic
For MacOS we provide installers on GitHub.
$ multipass find
IMAGE ALIASES VERSION DESCRIPTION
core 20180419 Ubuntu Core 16
14.04 t, trusty 20181203 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
16.04 x, xenial 20181207 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
18.04 b, bionic, lts 20181207 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
$ multipass launch ubuntu
Launching dancing-chipmunk...
Downloading Ubuntu 18.04 LTS..........
Launched: dancing chipmunk
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Release
dancing-chipmunk RUNNING 10.125.174.247 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
live-naiad RUNNING 10.125.174.243 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
snapcraft-asciinema STOPPED -- Ubuntu Snapcraft builder for Core 18
$ multipass info dancing-chipmunk
Name: dancing-chipmunk
State: RUNNING
IPv4: 10.125.174.247
Release: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Image hash: 19e9853d8267 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
Load: 0.97 0.30 0.10
Disk usage: 1.1G out of 4.7G
Memory usage: 85.1M out of 985.4M
$ multipass shell dancing-chipmunk
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)
...
Don't forget to logout (or Ctrl-D) or you may find yourself heading all the way down the Inception levels... ;)
$ multipass exec dancing-chipmunk -- lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release: 18.04
Codename: bionic
$ multipass stop dancing-chipmunk
$ multipass delete dancing-chipmunk
It will now show up as deleted:
Name State IPv4 Release
snapcraft-asciinema STOPPED -- Ubuntu Snapcraft builder for Core 18
dancing-chipmunk DELETED -- Not Available
And when you want to completely get rid of it:
$ multipass purge
multipass help
multipass help <command>
Here's a set of steps to build and run your own build of multipass:
cd <multipass>
apt install devscripts equivs
mk-build-deps -s sudo -i
cd <multipass>
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
sudo <multipass>/build/bin/multipassd &
<multipass>/build/bin/multipass launch --name foo