Multipass VM’s in Cockpit

by default cockpit doesn’t show vm’s build with multipass – Why – because cockpit uses libvirt and mulipass default virtualization system is qemu.

To check systems build with multipass and qemu

[~ (master)]$ multipass get local.driver
qemu

the qemu systems doesn’t show in cockpit. To list down vm’s running with qemu

[~ (master)]$ ps -ef | awk '/qemu/ && !/awk/' | sed -e 's/[^/]*//' -e 's/ -/\n\t-/g'

Install libvirt

To install libvirt, execute:

# use the equivalent for your distribution
$ sudo apt install libvirt-daemon-system

Switch the Multipass driver to libvirt

First, allow Multipass to use your local libvirt:

# connect the libvirt interface/plug
$ sudo snap connect multipass:libvirt

Then, to switch the Multipass driver to libvirt, run:

# you'll need to stop all the instances first
$ multipass stop --all

# and tell Multipass to use libvirt
$ multipass set local.driver=libvirt

All your existing instances will be migrated and can be used straight away.

You can still use the multipass client and the tray icon, and any changes you make to the configuration of the instance in libvirt will be persistent. They may not be represented in Multipass commands such as multipass info, though.

Use libvirt to view Multipass instances

You can view instances with libvirt in two ways, using the virsh CLI or the virt-manager GUI.

To use the virsh CLI, launch an instance and then execute virsh list (see man virsh for a command reference):

[~ (master)]$ virsh list
 Id   Name     State
------------------------
 1    node1    running
 2    node12   running
 3    node13   running
 4    node4    running

Switch back to the default driver

To switch back to the default qemu driver, execute:

# stop all instances again
$ multipass stop --all

# and switch back to the qemu driver
$ multipass set local.driver=qemu