Hi Everyone, After spending some time attempting to get a working development environment up and running under Windows 11 / WSL2 I thought I would share the steps that I have followed. This is my first post here so I hope that this is of use to somebody :slight_smile: I am a Systems Administrator used to working with Windows so this has been an interesting journey learning Linux / Ruby / Discourse etc. A few things seem to have changed since the guide for Windows 10 was written and I ran into a few issues along the way (and from reading the comments, I wasn’t the only one!) I can confirm that the following instructions worked on my Windows 11 Pro 22H2 install & also on my Windows Insider build of the upcoming Windows 11 23H2 Release Preview. I’ll try to keep the instructions as short and straightforward as possible :slight_smile: Initial Preparation Check for any WSL updates and install them if applicable. From a Windows Powershell window use this command:- wsl.exe --update Install Ubuntu on WSL2 using this command:- wsl.exe --install -d Ubuntu Follow the onscreen prompts to create the username and password Once you’re in the Ubuntu terminal, check for and install all applicable updates sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y Now that everything is updated we can proceed :slight_smile: WSL Modifications Before cloning Discourse, run the following command to open the /etc/wsl.conf file:- sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf At the bottom of the existing file, add the following , press Ctrl + X to save the changes and press “Y” when prompted. [automount] enabled = true root = /mnt/ options = "metadata,umask=22,fmask=11" Completely close the WSL terminal and relaunch it for these changes to properly apply. Now copy and paste the following one-line installation script to set up the development environment. Depending on the speed of your computer and/or internet connection this might take a bit of time to complete, so go and grab a coffee or something! bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discourse/install-rails/master/linux) Start the PostgreSQL service:- sudo service postgresql start Because we’re running in WSL2 I got a warning message about the VM running out of memory, which can be solved by running the following sudo sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1 Run the following so that the redis-server automatically restarts:- redis-server --daemonize yes Clone Discourse into the home folder:- git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git ~/discourse Change to the newly-created Discourse folder:- cd ~/discourse Run the following commands (I did them one line at a time)(Unsure whether this is necessary or if they can be copied and pasted in one go) source ~/.bashrc bundle install yarn install Setup the environment:- RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate Start Discourse DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME=localhost UNICORN_LISTENER=localhost:3000 bin/ember-cli -u Open a separate terminal , change into the Discourse directory using cd ~/discourse and run rails admin:create - follow the instructions to set up your Admin user account. Go to http://localhost:4200 in a web browser and Discourse should all be up and running :slight_smile:

[תמונה] AliBenBongo: Install Ubuntu on WSL2 using this command:- wsl.exe --install -d Ubuntu This part might fail. If it does click start , type turn windows features on or off Enable virtual machine platform Reboot Resume the commands. [image]

[תמונה] AliBenBongo: cd ~/discourse One very important thing that I struggled with for a while to figure out is that the repo absolutely must be on the WSL filesystem (i.e., NOT on /mnt/*). Otherwise, you’ll either get all kinds of odd errors or have a very, very, very slow instance. This is supposed to be common knowledge, but from my interaction with other devs, it kind of isn’t.

Hi AliBenBongo :wave: Thank you for this guide. Out of curiosity, did you try Install Discourse on Windows for development but faced issues on Windows 11? I followed this official guide less than two months ago to set up my dev install on Win11, and it worked flawlessly.

That’s interesting yes I did try that guide first and ran into many error messages. I can’t remember specifically but some of the error messages were mentioned in the comments section of that same thread … Think this is a good thing in the end as I’ve definitely got more knowledge now through resolving the issue myself and then writing this guide up! :slight_smile:

Probs a dum question but I have to ask. Assuming I could get this up and running following your guide. Do you think it’s possible to reverse proxy this to a domain?

There are no dumb questions, we can all always learn something new! :slight_smile: I don’t have much experience with reverse proxy stuff except for using Nginx Proxy Manager in a Docker container - perhaps have a look at that as it does most of the hard work and even generates free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt

You are going to hit a lot of pain points I suspect. The dev install is not supported to run in Production. Running the standard install in the cloud might cost a few dollars a month but how much is your time worth?! With that you can be up and running in 30 minutes and be done.

That is in fact what I have done. I started off with on communiteq, I also tried DigitalOcean but have ultimately landed on Contabo. I think I might be a lunatic because what I was trying doing (just to see if I could), running Ubuntu in HyperV, I even managed to get the VM on the same subnet lol but I could not get initial domain check to work. I think part of the problem is that I am already hosting a handfull of services on my Windows host and consequently I am port forwarding 80/443 to that machine IP. I know it’s beyond the scope of this thread and it’s not supported, but have you any experience trying to do something similar?

[תמונה] AliBenBongo: Initial Preparation Check for any WSL updates and install them if applicable. From a Windows Powershell window use this command:- It should be noted that, if you don’t have any subsystems installed yet then this command will not work.

מדריך להגדרת סביבת פיתוח Discourse - Windows 11 - מס׳ 17 מאת HAWK - התקנה

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