docs: launch waiting for initialization issue

[s-makin]

I want to use multipass in a tutorial for the Ubuntu Server docs, but when I try to launch a multipass VM with:

multipass launch --name tutorial

It eventually fails on the initialization step. It seems to be a cloud-init problem, but it's not clear exactly what cloud-init config is causing the delay since it doesn't report any errors in the log, just gets cut off midway through the initialization when the timeout limit is hit.

According to the page linked below from your docs, I added a timeout:

multipass launch --name tutorial --timeout 1000

It spins for ages, and eventually launches (after quite some time). Below is the excerpt from the log after it's finished:

Get:34 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates/universe amd64 Components [386 kB]
Get:45 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports/main amd64 Components [7344 B]
Get:51 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports/restricted amd64 Components [216 B]
Err:51 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports/restricted amd64 Components
  Hash Sum mismatch
  Hashes of expected file:
   - Filesize:216 [weak]
   - SHA256:951136adb5a979e500e70c2cd41e23ffcc4f2fd9de70dbc5dd0f04485687490d
   - SHA1:484537f43a6a78f72c13c1b8d82274518abd7d8c [weak]
   - MD5Sum:4af6047fe59d6b35bbc7a38230943617 [weak]
  Hashes of received file:
   - SHA256:31304fb80033939499007b05a600b1f337aa93f107788051376b5f4987766f91
   - SHA1:25aa524c74539864f6fdab2f58dd6acfd08a8bf0 [weak]
   - MD5Sum:69ace3df561913242dfa8055eff5f240 [weak]
   - Filesize:216 [weak]
  Last modification reported: Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:01:54 +0000
  Release file created at: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:20:52 +0000
Fetched 41.5 MB in 6min 9s (112 kB/s)
Reading package lists...
E: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble-backports/restricted/dep11/Components-amd64.yml.xz  Hash Sum mismatch
   Hashes of expected file:
    - Filesize:216 [weak]
    - SHA256:951136adb5a979e500e70c2cd41e23ffcc4f2fd9de70dbc5dd0f04485687490d
    - SHA1:484537f43a6a78f72c13c1b8d82274518abd7d8c [weak]
    - MD5Sum:4af6047fe59d6b35bbc7a38230943617 [weak]
   Hashes of received file:
    - SHA256:31304fb80033939499007b05a600b1f337aa93f107788051376b5f4987766f91
    - SHA1:25aa524c74539864f6fdab2f58dd6acfd08a8bf0 [weak]
    - MD5Sum:69ace3df561913242dfa8055eff5f240 [weak]
    - Filesize:216 [weak]
   Last modification reported: Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:01:54 +0000
   Release file created at: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:20:52 +0000
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
2026-04-16 11:15:12,557 - log_util.py[WARNING]: Failure when attempting to install packages: ['pollinate']
2026-04-16 11:15:12,581 - cc_package_update_upgrade_install.py[WARNING]: 1 failed with exceptions, re-raising the last one
2026-04-16 11:15:12,584 - log_util.py[WARNING]: Running module package_update_upgrade_install (<module 'cloudinit.config.cc_package_update_upgrade_install' from '/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/>
Cloud-init v. 25.3-0ubuntu1~24.04.1 finished at Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:15:12 +0000. Datasource DataSourceNoCloud [seed=/dev/sr0].  Up 410.18 seconds

Hope this helps!

---

Reported from: https://documentation.ubuntu.com/multipass/stable/how-to-guides/troubleshoot/troubleshoot-launch-start-issues/

[ricab]

Hi @s-makin, thanks for the report. I just experienced the same thing. The archive appears to be very slow right now and. There was an incident earlier today and it's probably getting hammered by many clients trying to catch up. Cloud-init wants to apt update and it has a long timeout for that. Once it's reached, it will eventually move on even if it could not update.
I am not sure if there is a way to tell cloud-init to use a shorter timeout.

We are working on a feature that will involve not waiting for internet to complete the initialization. But Multipass waits for the initialization, so for the time being I am not sure if there is a lot more we could do.

You can abbreviate it by shelling into the instance (once it is in the initialization step, it is running and ready for that), then sudo pkill apt. Let us know if that helps until things recover

[s-makin]

Thanks @ricab - if it's related to a temporary outage then I'll try again later/tomorrow/next week and see if I get the same problem (sounds like I shouldn't do). Will report back if it persists :)