How to manage command aliases - Incus documentation
Description: The Incus command-line client incus has support for adding aliases for commands that you use frequently. You can use aliases as shortcuts for longer commands, or to automatically add flags to exist...

Skip to content
Back to top
View this page

# How to manage command aliases

The Incus command-line client `incus` has support for adding aliases for commands that you use frequently. You can use aliases as shortcuts for longer commands, or to automatically add flags to existing commands.

Managing aliases is done through the `incus alias` command.

Within the `incus alias` command, you can use the following subcommands:

- `incus alias add` to add a new command alias

- `incus alias list` to list all command aliases

- `incus alias remove` to remove a command alias

- `incus alias rename` to rename a command alias

Run `incus alias --help` to see all available subcommands and parameters.

Note

Command aliases are different from image aliases. An image alias is an alternative name for an image, usually a shorter name or another common mnemonic for that image.

Image aliases are a server-side concept part of the Incus API whereas command aliases are purely part of the command line tool configuration.

## How to add a command alias

To create an alias, run `incus alias add` and provide the alias name and the alias command (enclosed in quotes).

    $ incus alias add my-alias "image list"
    $ incus my-alias
    +-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
    | ALIAS | FINGERPRINT  | PUBLIC |              DESCRIPTION               | ARCHITECTURE |   TYPE    |   SIZE    |     UPLOAD DATE      |
    +-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
    |       | 3b3bd7f47fca | no     | Debian bookworm amd64 (20260608_05:24) | x86_64       | CONTAINER | 106.22MiB | 2026/06/08 22:01 -03 |
    +-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+

When a command alias has the same name as an Incus command, the command alias will mask the Incus command. You would need to remove first the command alias if you want to run verbatim the Incus command of the same name.

## How to list all command aliases

To see all configured aliases, run `incus alias list`.

    $ incus alias list
    +----------+---------------------------+
    |  ALIAS   |          TARGET           |
    +----------+---------------------------+
    | my-alias | image list                |
    +----------+---------------------------+

## How to remove a command alias

To remove an existing command alias, type `incus alias remove` and add the name of that command alias.

    $ incus alias remove my-alias
    $ incus alias list
    +----------+---------------------------+
    |  ALIAS   |          TARGET           |
    +----------+---------------------------+

## How to rename a command alias

To rename an existing command alias, type `incus alias rename`, then add the name of that existing command alias, and finally the name of the new command alias.

    $ incus alias rename my-alias my-new-alias
    $ incus alias list
    +--------------+---------------------------+
    |    ALIAS     |          TARGET           |
    +--------------+---------------------------+
    | my-new-alias | image list                |
    +--------------+---------------------------+

## Arguments in aliased commands

When using command alias with parameters, the Incus command-line client will place those parameters at the end of the aliased command. With the alias `incus alias add del "delete"`, both commands produce the same result.

    incus delete c1 --force
    incus del c1 --force

This behavior can be modified by using the special string `@ARGS@`, that will place all arguments in the position it was defined in the alias string. With the alias `incus alias add create-foo "create @ARGS@ foo"`, both commands produce the same result.

    incus create images:debian/12 foo
    incus create-foo images:debian/12

It’s also possible to define numbered arguments (`@ARG1@`, `@ARG2@`, …), that will receive arguments in their appearance order and can be placed anywhere in the alias string. With the alias `incus alias add cat "exec @ARG1@ -- cat @ARG2@"`, the following commands are equivalent.

    incus exec u1 -- cat /etc/hosts
    incus cat u1 /etc/hosts

## Built-in `shell` alias

Incus comes with the `shell` built-in command alias. That alias is based on the `incus exec` command, executing `exec @ARGS@ -- su -l`.

    $ incus alias list
    +-----------+----------------------+
    |   ALIAS   |        TARGET        |
    +-----------+----------------------+
    | shell     | exec @ARGS@ -- su -l |
    +-----------+----------------------+

If you run `incus shell myinstance`, this command alias will expand into `incus exec myinstance -- su -l`.

The `--` construct is a command-line artifact that instructs the Incus command-line client to stop processing further parameters, like the `-l` that follows. Without `--`, the expanded command `incus exec mycontainer su -l` would fail, because the Incus command-line client would try to parse the `-l` flag. In this particular case, it would fail with an error because there is no `-l` parameter for `incus shell`.

The `su -l` command is synonymous to `su -` or `su --login`. It launches a login shell in the instance as the `root` user. The command reads the necessary configuration files to launch a login shell for user `root`.

The `shell` alias is built-in into the Incus server. Therefore, the Incus client is not able to remove it. If you try to remove it, there will be an error that the alias does not exist.

    $ incus alias remove shell
    Error: Alias shell doesn't exist

If you add a new command alias with the name `shell`, the new command alias will be masking the built-in command alias. That is, the Incus command-line client will be using your newly added alias instead and the built-in command alias will be hidden. When you remove the newly added alias `shell`, the built-in alias will appear again.

## Example use cases

### How to ask confirmation for deleting instances

To always ask for confirmation when deleting an instance, create an alias for `incus delete` that always runs `incus delete --interactive`.

The following command for `incus alias`, will add the command alias with name `delete`, and will invoke the same Incus command but with the added `--interactive` flag.

    incus alias add delete "delete --interactive"

Note that when you now run `incus delete mycontainer` to delete an instance called `myinstance`, the Incus command-line client will replace `incus delete` with `incus delete --interactive` and will instead execute `incus delete --interactive myinstance`.

### How to use a command alias to get a non-root shell in an instance

Several Incus images have been configured to create a non-root username as shown in the table below.

Distribution | Username | Image
--- | --- | ---
Alpine | `alpine` | `images:alpine/edge/cloud`
Debian | `debian` | `images:debian/12/cloud`
Fedora | `fedora` | `images:fedora/42/cloud`
Ubuntu | `ubuntu` | `images:ubuntu/24.04/cloud`

You can get a shell into the instance for this non-root username with the following command.

    $ incus launch images:debian/12/cloud mycontainer
    Launching mycontainer
    $ incus exec mycontainer -- su -l debian
    debian@mycontainer:~$

By using the Incus command aliases, you can also create a command alias to get a shell into that instance. In this command alias, you specify to `su -l` into the username `debian`.

    incus alias add debian 'exec @ARGS@ -- su -l debian'

Finally, you can now get a shell into the instance with the following convenient command:

    $ incus debian mycontainer
    debian@mycontainer:~$

Note

As an alternative to `su`, you may use instead `sudo`. In that case, the command would be as follows.

     incus alias add debian `exec @ARGS@ -- sudo --login --user debian`

Note

When launching a system container or a virtual machine, Incus allows to specify environment variables.

     incus launch -c environment.MYVARIABLE=myvalue images:debian/12 myinstance

A login shell in such an instance does not have access to those environment variables. This is due to the semantics of login shells with either `su -l` or `sudo --login` which do not preserve any environment variables. If you want to preserve any environment variables, you would instead use either `su --preserve-environment` or `sudo --preserve-env`.

Another alternative is to add the environment variables into the instance to the file system file `/etc/environment`. By doing so, any new login shell to the instance will be able to parse this file and enable any environment variables.