canonical/multipass

Support mounting VHD drives

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#1,923 opened on Jan 17, 2021

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enhancementhelp wanted

Description

What are you trying to do? Most of the hypervisors we support (hyperkit, VirtualBox etc.) support mounting VHD drives(I am not talking about directories, I am talking about virtual hard disk files).

It would be great if we had a command like multipass mountdisk.

What's your proposed solution? If on hyperkit, add the volume to mount when executing the hyperkit command.

If on Virtualbox, add the volume using VboxManage

Additional context

Challenges

  • The instance needs to be restarted
  • Some hypervisors may not support mounting VHD files, I am not sure about them.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cliinfrastructure
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
3-5 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
C++ knowledgeUnderstanding of hyperkitUnderstanding of VirtualBoxMultipass codebase
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
35
Research direction
Examine the hyperkit and VirtualBox backend implementations in the Multipass source code. Understand how mount commands are currently executed for each hypervisor. Consider the need to restart the instance and the potential lack of support for VHD files in some hypervisors. The issue body provides initial direction but requires investigation into the specific APIs and code paths.