MacOS : Sequoia 15.2 / Apple M1 / Multipass 1.15.0+mac : Unable to shell/exec/SSH into any VM as normal user. Works fine for ROOT user

[viva0007]

Describe the bug

• Unable to shell/exec/SSH into any VM as normal user. Works fine for ROOT user
• All Multipass commands work fine except shell/exec

Error Message "ssh: connect to host cp port 22: Undefined error: 0"

To Reproduce
How, and what happened?

1. multipass ...

Install Mulitpass on M1

Expected behavior
What did you expect to happen?

All users should connect to multipass VMs

Logs

Will be attached.

Additional info

• OS: MacOC 15.2
• multipass version 1.15.0+mac
• multipass info attached
• multipass get local.driver qemu
  multipassd.log
  m_Info.txt

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

[viva0007]

Log files attached. Can someone take a look at this issue?

[AIWithShrey]

Same issue for me. I uninstalled the GUI (Installed from GitHub releases), installed it with Homebrew and the problem remains.

My Mac is an x84_64 machine.

Logs from the Console app on my Mac:

multipassd.log

There is no error message in the logs to understand why this is failing.

I am also unable to set a local passphrase and authenticate to ssh into the VM as root. I basically have no way to access the VM through my host unless I'm using the Multipass GUI which has a built-in shell that I can use to access the VM.

Any help is much appreciated. I'm trying to set up a Kubernetes cluster and prefer Multipass over other VM providers. Getting this working asap is crucial for me.

[AIWithShrey]

Same issue for me. I uninstalled the GUI (Installed from GitHub releases), installed it with Homebrew and the problem remains.

My Mac is an x84_64 machine.

Logs from the Console app on my Mac:

multipassd.log

There is no error message in the logs to understand why this is failing.

I am also unable to set a local passphrase and authenticate to ssh into the VM as root. I basically have no way to access the VM through my host unless I'm using the Multipass GUI which has a built-in shell that I can use to access the VM.

Any help is much appreciated. I'm trying to set up a Kubernetes cluster and prefer Multipass over other VM providers. Getting this working asap is crucial for me.

I solved this issue by quitting the TMUX session and creating a new one. There seemed to be an issue with how TMUX and Multipass were interacting, I'm not sure what the exact problem was.

[levkropp]

Hi @viva0007 and @AIWithShrey ,

Thanks for reporting this issue and apologies for the delayed response. From the logs and the behavior described, it looks like the issue may stem from macOS’s network permissions layer interfering with SSH connections when running as a normal user. Interestingly, restarting certain sessions (like TMUX) seems to fix the issue temporarily, which suggests this could be tied to session management or network permissions.

This seems related to another issue we've seen (#3766 Unable to connect to instance on macOS 15.1 (no route to host)), where users also report that only root can successfully SSH into instances. In that case, network routes were being blocked for non-root users, likely due to macOS network extension restrictions.

Could you try rebooting your Mac or restarting any active session (TMUX, shell, etc.) to see if it helps? Also, trying to connect to the instance using verbose flags ssh -vvv as root and non-root, like in the linked issue above, could give more clues.

We'll continue investigating this. Thanks again for the detailed info!

[viva0007]

@levkropp

After every reboot, ssh (port 22) works for 10-15 minutes and breaks. If I keep a SSH into a VM, it stays open and breaks in 10-15 minutes, after I end my session.

Running Kubernetes on these nodes. port 6443 is never open so, I can't connect to API even when SSH port is open.

Logs are attached.

SSH and Kubernetes connections work just fine as root user all the time.

1.txt

[viva0007]

@levkropp

I use "Iterm2" and mac native "terminal" app.

[johnstonmatt]

I've solved this myself today, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network and ensure the app you are using to run the Multipass CLI is enabled, eg. Terminal, Hyper, Ghostty, Iterm2 etc.

cc #3766

[viva0007]

@johnstonmatt

Thank you. That did the trick.

[olandodeflexy]

Thank you @johnstonmatt that worked for me too.
Wheew.