Install ubuntu VM on MACOS using multipass And Run Certbot on it

2 min readDec 25, 2023

Multipass is the recommended method for creating Ubuntu VMs on Ubuntu. It’s designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command, and it works on Linux, Windows and macOS.

1. Install multipass

On Linux and macOS it’s available as a snap:

sudo snap install multipass

2. Find available images

To find available images you can use the following Command

multipass find

command, which will produce a list like this:

Image                       Aliases           Version          Description
snapcraft:core18            18.04             20201111         Snapcraft builder for Core 18
snapcraft:core20            20.04             20210921         Snapcraft builder for Core 20
snapcraft:core22            22.04             20220426         Snapcraft builder for Core 22
snapcraft:devel                               20221128         Snapcraft builder for the devel series
core                        core16            20200818         Ubuntu Core 16

3. Launch Instance

You can launch a fresh instance by specifying either the image name from the list (in this example, 22.04) or using an alias, if the image has one.

$ multipass launch 22.04
Launched: cleansing-guanaco

4. Check Out Running Status Of VM

You can check out the currently running instance(s) by using the “multipass list` command:

$ multipass list                                                  
Name                    State             IPv4             Image
cleansing-guanaco       Running           10.140.26.17     Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

5. Details About The VM

You can use the multipass info command to find out more details about the VM instance parameters:

$ multipass info cleansing-guanaco 
Name:           cleansing-guanaco
State:          Running
IPv4:           10.140.26.17
Release:        Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Image hash:     dc5b5a43c267 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
Load:           0.45 0.19 0.07
Disk usage:     1.4G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   168.3M out of 969.5M
Mounts:         --

Connect to a running instance

To enter the VM you created, use the shell command:

$ multipass shell cleansing-guanaco 
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64)
(...)
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~$ sudo su
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~#

Disconnect from the instance

Don’t forget to log out (or Ctrl + D) when you are done, or you may find yourself heading all the way down the Inception levels…

Stop or start an instance

You can stop an instance to save resources using the stop command:

$ multipass stop cleansing-guanaco

You can start it back up again using the start command:

$ multipass start cleansing-guanaco

Delete the instance

Once you are finished with the instance, you can delete it as follows:

$ multipass delete cleansing-guanaco

It will now show up as deleted when you use the list command:

$ multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Image
cleansing-guanaco       Deleted           --               Not Available

And when you want to completely get rid of it (and any other deleted instances), you can use the purge command:

$ multipass purge

Which we can check again using list:

$ multipass list
No instances found.

INSTALL CERTBOT IN VM

$ multipass shell cleansing-guanaco 
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64)
(...)
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~$ sudo su
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~# snap install --classic certbot

GENERATE SSL

$ multipass shell cleansing-guanaco 
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64)
(...)
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~$ sudo su
ubuntu@cleansing-guanaco:~# certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns  -d "*.dns.name.in" -d "dns.name.in"

Enjoy!!!