Enable support for image launching on macOS and Windows

[moondev]

Is it possible to directly launch a qcow2/img cloud-init enabled image on macOS? This works great on Linux. Is this due to differences between qemu and hyperkit image format?

Test image used: https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/31/Cloud/x86_64/images/Fedora-Cloud-Base-31-1.9.x86_64.qcow2

works on linux

multipass launch -n fedora https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/31/Cloud/x86_64/images/Fedora-Cloud-Base-31-1.9.x86_64.qcow2

fails on macos

returns "http and file based images are not supported"

[Saviq]

Hi @moondev yeah, we currently have to pass kernel + initrd directly to hyperkit (no bootloader), so we can't really support images that we can't be sure will work with the kernels we use…

We're working on it, though!

[moondev]

@Saviq Thanks for the details! Very interesting as well as clever way to leverage hyperkit for cloud-init.

Looking forward to a future update to support this. I suppose using an alternative hypervisor could be an option but then you would need to install it first which is no fun. Congrats on the 1.0.0 launch and keep up the great work!

[alexellis]

Would qemu work as an alternative with its hardware acceleration?

[Saviq]

Hi @alexellis we'll be evaluating qemu for that reason (and more) in the near future.

[alexellis]

How are you planning on dealing with networking? I had issues getting any examples for qemu on MacOS to work for port mapping.

[jasonmccallister]

Ideally I would love to be able to build a custom pre-built Ubuntu image and download them from the launch command. We have a hefty cloud-config setup right now that would reduce our setup by just downloading an image instead.

(I know this is on the roadmap, just excited to see the progress being made)