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 (and also create it, if it doesn’t exist). You can also pass the name of an existing instance. If the instance is not running, it will be started automatically.
If you run multipass shell you’ll find yourself in the primary instance:
Launched: primary
Mounted '/Users/giulia' into 'primary:Home'
Welcome to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 6.8.0-44-generic aarch64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/pro
System information as of Wed Sep 18 15:11:15 UTC 2024
System load: 0.47
Usage of /: 40.2% of 3.80GB
Memory usage: 22%
Swap usage: 0%
Processes: 109
Users logged in: 0
IPv4 address for enp0s1: 192.168.64.21
IPv6 address for enp0s1: fdec:5598:6ba4:a940:5054:ff:fe88:498b
Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.
23 updates can be applied immediately.
23 of these updates are standard security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable
Enable ESM Apps to receive additional future security updates.
See https://ubuntu.com/esm or run: sudo pro status
To open a shell in an existing instance, run the command:
multipass shell <instance name>
The full multipass help shell output explains the available options:
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).
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