1.0.2

Multipass version 1.0.2 (Linux only)

This is a bugfix release for Linux, fixing VM deletion crash (#1266) on qemu.

The Snap is available in the stable snap channel:

snap refresh multipass --channel stable
# or
snap install multipass --classic

1.0.1

Multipass version 1.0.1 (Linux only)

This is a bugfix release for Linux, fixing suspend/resume behaviour (#1243) on qemu.

The Snap is available in the stable snap channel:

snap refresh multipass --channel stable
# or
snap install multipass --classic

1.0.0

Multipass version 1.0.0

We are proud to present the 1.0.0 stable release of Multipass!

Windows and macOS installers are available below, and the Snap in the stable snap channel:

snap refresh multipass --channel stable
# or
snap install multipass --classic

Summary

Multipass is a mini-cloud on your workstation using native hypervisors of all the supported plaforms (Windows, macOS and Linux), it will give you an Ubuntu command line in just a click ("Open shell") or a simple multipass shell command, or even a keyboard shortcut. Find what images are available with multipass find and create new instances with multipass launch.

You can initialize instances through cloud-init as you normally would on all the clouds Ubuntu is supported on, just pass the configuration to multipass launch --cloud-init.

Accessing files from your host machine is supported through the multipass mount command, and to move files between the host and instances, you can use multipass transfer.

Highlights

• Full desktop integration across all platforms (application icon, system menu / notification area icon and update notifications)
• Use a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+U or ⌘⌥U) to open a shell in your primary instance
• Your home directory will be automatically mounted in ~/Home in the primary instance
• There's a checkbox under the "About" item to toggle the system / tray menu starting automatically on login
• Our website gained a new "Docs" section that we'll be updating with content, but you can also contribute, since it's converted live from Discourse posts

You can find the full list of changes since v0.10.0 in our v1.0.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

System menu

To disable the system / tray menu autostart, just click on the item under "About". You can always run the Multipass app manually.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)

0.10.0

Multipass version 0.10.0

Quickly following 0.9.0, here's another beta release of Multipass.

Windows and macOS installers are available below, and the Snap in the beta snap channel:

snap refresh multipass --beta
# or
snap install multipass --beta --classic

macOS notice

We've had some trouble with the signed version of the installer, so we're adding an unsigned version as a fallback. Please let us know in an issue if you have any troubles. Thanks!

Highlights

• fixed issues related to AppArmor on distros other than Ubuntu (#1228, #1218, #1223)
• improvements of the System menu icon on macOS (#1178, #1082)
• fixed Windows console behaviour when redirecting output to a file (#577, #1170)

You can find the full list of changes since v0.9.0 in our v0.10.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

System menu

To disable the icon autostart, just run: multipass set client.gui.autostart=false. You can always run the Multipass app manually.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)

0.9.0

Multipass version 0.9.0

Windows and macOS installers available below, the Snap in the beta snap channel:

snap refresh multipass --channel beta
# or
snap install multipass --channel beta --classic

macOS notice

We've had some trouble with the signed version of the installer, so we're adding an unsigned version as a fallback. Please let us know in an issue if you have any troubles. Thanks!

Highlights

• image trimming to recover host disk space (#880)
• make mounts more resilient (#937 #509)
• driver healthchecks will now inform you of their prerequisites rather than failing late (#6 #948)
• switch to core18 base (#596 #598)
• prepare for confinement and switching to strict mode in the snap (#995)
• system menu integration for Snap and Windows (#991 #967 #944)
• improve daemon responsiveness (#984 #1033 #1109 #1110)
• publish development Snaps and macOS installers on GitHub (#1125 #1147)
• help the user choose a disk size when they've requested too small (#701 #1120)
• a lot of multipass help and documentation fixes (#612 #1011 #1023 #1054 #1104 #1099 #1113 #1123)

You can find the full list of changes in our v0.9.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

System menu

On Windows and Linux, the system menu icon is now fully integrated and autostarted. To disable autostart, just run: multipass set client.gui.autostart=false. You can still always run the Multipass app manually.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)

0.8.0

Multipass version 0.8.0

Highlights

• multipass find output is now nicely formatted (#794)
• separate data for different drivers, allowing safe switching between them (#800)
• standard input/output support in transfer (#789 - thanks @maximdanilov!)
• you can change the primary instance name, meaning any existing instance of your choice can be the primary one - just multipass set client.primary-name=<name> (#805)
• it is now as easy as multipass set local.driver=virtualbox to change drivers (#835)
  if you used snap set to change it previously, the setting will get migrated to multipass set for you
• in the snap, the libvirt driver now uses system libvirtd instead of an internal one (#850)

You can find the full list of changes in our v0.8.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

Notes

The MULTIPASS_VM_DRIVER environment variable is now ignored. Please unset it and use multipass set local.driver=… to switch backends.

Significant bugfixes

• prevent crash on delete --purge (#761)
• fix concurrent launches of the same image (#664)
• improve find formatting (#603, #765, #530)
• clean up instance data on failed launch (#680)
• long output to exec hangs (#772)

System menu

At the moment, on Windows and macOS there's no icon to click on to run the GUI, as it's our first iteration. You can run multipass-gui yourself and see the menu in action :)

We'll be properly integrating it with the desktop environments soon.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)

0.7.1

Multipass version 0.7.1

Here's another Multipass release with a handful of bugfixes:

• #680: Daemon leaks instances when launching with low --disk
• #825: Image hashes may not match when a new cloud-image is uploaded
• #829: multipass launch… should work offline for all cached images
• #840: multipass find with no args FATAL error

0.7.0

Multipass version 0.7.0

Another big Multipass release! The big part is that we added a preview of VirtualBox support for Windows and macOS!

Other Highlights

• we've significantly improved concurrency, and as a result - responsiveness (#682, #724)
• there's a new primary instance feature, that lets you avoid typing the instance name,
  multipass shell is all you need to get your first Ubuntu shell (#723)
• core18 is now a supported alias for Ubuntu Core 18 (#771)
• we renamed copy-files to transfer for a nicer command line experience (#778)
• there's now a system menu / system tray icon, where you can see and interact with your instances (#565)
• concurrent launch requests now share the image being downloaded (#664)

Notes

At the moment you need to run the multipass-gui system menu manually.

Significant bugfixes

• Multipass won't launch disco VM (#690)
• multipassd SEGV on removing / launching instances (#752)
• a number of bash completion issues (#700, #714, #716)
• multipassd segfaults on launch and delete --purge on same instance (#761)

You can find the full list of changes in our v0.7.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

VirtualBox support

We added support for VirtualBox, primarily to lower the requirements of Multipass on Windows. Now anywhere VirtualBox runs, Multipass will, too.

It's a separate environment so your instances from Hyper-V or hyperkit (the default backends on Windows and macOS, respectively) will not move over, but you can switch between the backends freely.

To enable the preview VirtualBox support, follow the steps below:

• Windows
  • ensure Hyper-V is disabled in Windows Features
  • install Multipass and VirtualBox
  • in Admin Powershell:

    New-ItemProperty `
      -Path "HKLM:System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" `
      -Name MULTIPASS_VM_DRIVER `
      -PropertyType String `
      -Value VIRTUALBOX

  • reboot
• macOS
  • install Multipass and VirtualBox
  • in Terminal (you'll need to do this every time you reinstall / upgrade Multipass):

    sudo /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist
    sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy \
      -c "Add :EnvironmentVariables:MULTIPASS_VM_DRIVER string VIRTUALBOX" \
      /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist
    sudo /bin/launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist

To go back to the default backend:

• Windows
  • in Admin Powershell:

    Remove-ItemProperty `
      -Path "HKLM:System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" `
      -Name MULTIPASS_VM_DRIVER

  • enable Hyper-V in Windows Features
  • reboot
• macOS
  • in Terminal:

    sudo /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist
    sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy \
      -c "Remove :EnvironmentVariables:MULTIPASS_VM_DRIVER" \
      /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist
    sudo /bin/launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.canonical.multipassd.plist

Please let us know any successes (and failures, too) :)

When ready, we'll add an easier way to switch the backends.

System menu

At the moment, on Windows and macOS there's no icon to click on to run the GUI, as it's our first iteration. You can run multipass-gui yourself and see the menu in action :)

We'll be properly integrating it with the desktop environments soon.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)

0.6.1

Multipass version 0.6.1

With the impending trusty end-of-life we decided to allow launching it
despite it becoming unsupported.

multipass launch <release> now works for any release still published
by http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com, supported or not.

To see the available releases, use multipass find --show-unsupported.

Release 0.6.0

Multipass version 0.6.0

Highlights

• multipass shell <instance> will now start the instance if not running (#631)
• --cloud-init - option to launch will read the config from standard input (#628)
• multipass launch is much faster due to removing the wait on cloud-init to complete (#619)
• we'll now stick to the Semantic Versioning standard proper (#692)
• we added update notifications on the CLI (#688)
• HTTPS image downloads now work in the snap and Windows (#702)

Notes

We had to disable some concurrency in the daemon to avoid crashes (#585) so some operations will take longer now. The good news is that we're already working on a proper solution for that (#682), which will be part of our next release.

Significant bugfixes

#569: Transient "Downloaded image hash does not match" error
#689: Mount fails periodically with transport endpoint is not connected
#652: Multipass loses snapcraft project mount when unpacked squashfs is within
#555: failure to contact image providers causes multipassd to abort startup
#585: multipassd SIGSEGV on clean while launching
#386: Network timeout too aggressive
#626: Restart multipassd on proxy changes
#588, #616, #677: Fix how we handle memory requests between the client and backends

You can find the full list of changes in our v0.6.0 project and even more detailed in the full commit log.

Feedback

Please file issues here for problems and feature requests, or come to our discourse to chat. We're also on #multipass on Freenode. See you there :)