Replace Docker Desktop with Multipass

Multipass is a multi-platform tool used to set up and run Ubuntu VMs on your local machine, while using some of the cloud scripting functionality.

1. Install Multipass

• install from https://multipass.run/install

2. Review the docker workflow

We will be using the docker workflow, a cloud-init yaml file

3. Launch a new instance using the docker workflow

Here we are creating a new Ubuntu VM using the docker workflow. By passing only docker, we are specifying to use the workflow. We could also use a generic Ubuntu VM by omitting docker. Also, add a custom name with -n my-custom-name

multipass launch docker -c 4 -m 12G -d 100G

Note: we’ve assigned 4 cpu cores, 12gb of memory, and 100gb of disk space. Adjust accordingly.

4. View Logs

If your launch fails, you may need to look over the logs to figure out what happened.

• view instance logs at /Library/Logs/Multipass/*.log

5. Access docker instance

The instance should be availabe now, so we can load it up and try things out.

• view available VMs with multipass ls. Should see docker.
• access new instance with multipass shell docker
• run docker ps
• notice that there is already a container running called portainer

6. Set up Portainer

This is a browser-based docker admin tool, also handy for monitoring container resource usage and performance.

• To log in, you’ll need to know your instance’s address, which you can find with multipass info --all
• go to <instance's ip address>:9000 in your browser
• without a certificate, you may need to “continue anyway”
• set your password and

7. Set aliases

This step is the secret sauce, and it lets you type docker or docker compose on your local machine and run it in the VM.

• docker workflow sets two aliases by default
• remove both with multipass unalias docker && multipass unalias docker-compose
• set multipass alias docker:docker

8. Mount projects in Multipass

• If we have a project at ~/docker-project, then we’ll need to mount that using multipass mount ~/docker-project docker where docker is the name of the multipass instance.
• view that it worked with multipass info --all

9. Optional: Set up Docker in VS Code

• after we’ve aliased docker, we should be able to see our containers and images in VSCode
• we’ll need to modify the docker-compose path either in the UI or in the user settings.json and update it to "dev.containers.dockerComposePath": "docker compose"