Installing in an Incus virtual machine

IncusOS can be easily installed in an Incus virtual machine.

Get and import install media

Follow the instructions to get an IncusOS image. This document will assume an ISO image is used.

Once downloaded, import the ISO image to Incus’ storage.

Command lineWeb interface

incus storage volume import default Downloads/IncusOS_202511050158.iso IncusOS_202511050158.iso --type=iso

Create a new virtual machine

Command lineWeb interface

Create a new virtual machine and attach the ISO image.

incus init --empty --vm IncusOS \
    -c security.secureboot=false \
    -c limits.cpu=1 \
    -c limits.memory=4GiB \
    -d root,size=50GiB
incus config device add IncusOS vtpm tpm
incus config device add IncusOS boot-media disk pool=default source=IncusOS_202511050158.iso boot.priority=10

Secure Boot and TPM configuration

IncusOS depends on Secure Boot and a v2.0 TPM. When configuring the virtual machine, make the following selections:

• Set security.secureboot=false to disable loading of default Secure Boot keys

• Add a virtual TPM device

CPU, memory, network, and local storage

Configure the CPU and memory for the virtual machine as desired and add at least one network interface.

Remember that the main system drive must be at least 50GiB or larger.

IncusOS installation

Command lineWeb interface

Start the virtual machine, and IncusOS will begin its installation.

incus start IncusOS

Wait a few seconds for the Secure Boot key enrollment to occur, then attach to the virtual machine’s console.

incus console IncusOS --type=vga

Upon completion of the install, stop the virtual machine and remove the CDROM device.

incus stop IncusOS
incus config device remove IncusOS boot-media

IncusOS is ready for use

Command lineWeb interface

Start the virtual machine, and IncusOS will perform its first boot configuration.

incus start IncusOS --console=vga

Once complete, follow the instructions for accessing the system.