`multipass exec` command
See also: Multipass
execand shells, How to use instance command aliases
The exec command runs the given commands inside the instance. The first argument is the instance to run the commands on, -- optionally separates the multipass options from the rest - the command to run itself:
multipass exec primary -- uname -r
Sample output:
4.15.0-48-generic
You can pipe standard input and output to/from the command; for example:
multipass exec primary -- lsb_release -a | grep ^Codename:
Sample output:
No LSB modules are available.
Codename: bionic
The -- separator is required if you want to pass options to the command being run. Options to the exec command itself must be specified before --.
You can specify on which instance directory the command must be run in three different ways.
The first one is --working-directory <dir>, which tells Multipass that the command must be run in the folder <dir>. For example:
multipass exec arriving-pipefish --working-directory /home -- ls -a
The ls -la command shows the contents of the /home directory, because it was run from there:
. .. ubuntu
The second option to specify the working directory is to look through the mounted folders first. In case we are running the alias on the host from a directory which is mounted on the instance, the command will be run on the instance from there. If the working directory is not mounted on the instance, the command will be run on the default directory on the instance. This is the default behaviour and no parameter must be specified for this mapping to happen.
The third option is to directly run the command in the default directory in the instance (usually, it is /home/ubuntu. The parameter to force this behaviour is --no-map-working-directory.
The full multipass help exec output explains the available options:
Usage: multipass exec [options] <name> [--] <command>
Run a command on an 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.
-d, --working-directory <dir> Change to <dir> before execution
-n, --no-map-working-directory Do not map the host execution path to a
mounted path
Arguments:
name Name of instance to execute the command on
command Command to execute on the instance
Errors or typos? Topics missing? Hard to read? Let us know or open an issue on GitHub.