# Installation notes for Discourse on Bash for Windows
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [August 3, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141 "2016-08-03T03:10:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/1 "2016-08-03T03:10:49Z")
Here are some rough notes on how I went about install Discourse on Bash for Windows:
### Install required packages
Mostly a cut-and-paste job from our [docker base image](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker/blob/master/image/base/Dockerfile).
```plaintext
curl http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ $(lsb_release -sc)-pgdg main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/postgres.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential git build-essential git wget \
libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
libssl-dev libyaml-dev libtool \
libxml2-dev gawk \
postgresql-client-9.5 libpq-dev libreadline-dev \
language-pack-en \
psmisc whois redis-server \
advancecomp jhead jpegoptim libjpeg-turbo-progs optipng libjemalloc-dev imagemagick
```
### Installing rbenv
```plaintext
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
cd ~/.rbenv && src/configure && make -C src
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
```
exit shell and start again so env is there.
### Install ruby
```plaintext
rbenv install 2.3.1
echo 2.3.1 >> ~/.rbenv/version
```
Make 🍸 this will take a while cause the filesystem is very slow.
### Install Postgres on Windows
> **[PostgreSQL: Windows installers](https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/)**
This is required cause installing postgres is not yet supported.
### Install Discourse
```plaintext
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git
gem install bundler
cd discourse
bundle install
# correct bundler permissions per http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37211007/installing-rails-on-ubuntu-bash-windows-10
chmod -R +t ~/.bundle/cache
bundle install
```
### Hack database config
Edit `config/database.yml`:
Add the following into test and development sections:
```plaintext
host: localhost
username: postgres
password: YOURPWD
port: 5432
```
### Start up redis
```plaintext
redis-server --bind 0.0.0.0
```
### Migrate Discourse
```plaintext
bin/rake db:create db:migrate
```
### Discourse now runs! hooray 🎊 🍾
At the end of this process Discourse running on Windows without ANY VM installed. This is quite impressive.
```plaintext
bundle exec puma
```
### The good news!
Discourse runs fine, its a little bit fiddly but all the gems install and the test suite runs.
Once booted up Discourse is quite fast and usable.
### The bad news!
The filesystem mapping technology keeps the original files in an NTFS partition and performs internal mapping, pretending this filesystem is actually a Linux native one. Unfortunately NTFS + mapping overhead means that it is much slower than using ext4fs directly or some other native solution.
The effect of this in real terms is:
- Running our test suite is slower
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows takes 8:20 to run the test suite. My ubuntu VM takes 6:15. Same hardware.
- Installing ruby / gems and so on is a lot slower
Ruby has lots of little files, I did not time it but it feels at least twice slower to compile ruby from source.
- Booting Discourse takes more than **twice** longer:
```plaintext
# Linux VM
sam@ubuntu discourse % time bin/rails r "puts 'hi'"
hi
2.54s user
0.50s system
99% cpu
3.059 total
# Bash on Ubuntu on Windows
sam@SAM-PC:~/discourse$ time bin/rails r "puts 'hi'"
hi
real 0m7.123s
user 0m3.063s
sys 0m4.000s
```
7.12secs VS 3.05secs
This means that starting up a dev web server and opening up a rails console take much longer.
This is a **huge** issue, it is big enough for me to recommend against this setup for now.
There is an open ticket that once resolved will allow bash on Windows to run native filesystems, once that is implemented we should revisit these results:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/131](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/131)
Note: All tests were done on the beta version of Bash on Ubuntu on Windows that is bundled with Windows 10 anniversary edition (made public on 2nd of August 2016)
---
### Author:  [@bitcrazed](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bitcrazed)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2016, 4:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/2 "2016-08-03T04:06:48Z")
Awesome stuff, Sam. Thanks for making this work 😀
We are aware of the file system challenges you highlight. Aiming to make big improvements in future releases.
This is one if the reasons we are depending NOT to rely on Bash/WSL for server scenarios in this first release, but this is a great dev scenario.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2017, 5:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/3 "2017-04-13T17:08:46Z")
I just upgraded to creators update, with latest WSL.
**The good news**
Postgres can now be installed inside WSL and run as a service, no need to run it on the host 🎊 . Overall everything is much more polished, you can see tasks that are running in WSL in the task manager, it feels like one cohesive unit.
**The not so good news**
Filesystem access is still terrible, in fact this round of testing on my new computer (that uses bitlocker) gives me **35 seconds** to run `bin/rake routes`, the same command takes **3.2** seconds on the **same** computer under vmware.
My recommendation here is to keep observing, but still use a VM for now for any real dev work needed.
---
### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2017, 9:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/4 "2017-04-15T09:42:47Z")
Did you leave feedback to Microsoft on this? They currently seems to be quite responsive on WSL issues 🙂
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/5 "2017-04-16T02:23:35Z")
If you can provide a filesystem benchmark I can run it @sam my system is close to optimal and I am full up to date.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2017, 2:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/6 "2017-04-17T14:06:39Z")
I think `bonnie++` will do the trick…
I ran:
```plaintext
sudo -i
mkdir /root/test
bonnie++ -d /root/test -u root
```
Output is a bit cryptic, however there is a [perl tool](https://www.jamescoyle.net/how-to/913-simple-bonnie-example) that converts it to readable HTML. You would need to run it both in WSL and on the same machine in a VM.
It took about 5 minutes to run in my VM, it has been 5 minutes now and it feels like no progress was made in WSL. I am going to terminate it now and may run it over lunch … or just give up cause it is so egregiously bad.
This is the result from my VM
20 minutes later, this is the result of me running bonnie++ in WSL
```plaintext
root@windows:~# bonnie++ -d /root/test -u root
Using uid:0, gid:0.
Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...Bonnie: drastic I/O error (rmdir): Directory not empty
Cleaning up test directory after error.
```
I guess if we can not run benchmarking tools, the best I have to offer is
1. How long does it take to compile Ruby (which is heavily filesystem focused)
2. How long does it take to run `rake routes` which is almost entirely filesystem focused
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/7 "2017-04-17T14:45:11Z")
I think it is worth stressing just how **intense** the IO is during the time you boot up a Rails web application:
Take this little sample script from your rails root:
```ruby
puts Process.pid
gets
require File.expand_path("config/environment", __FILE__ )
```
In another window run:
```bash
sudo perf trace -s -p WHATEVER_THE_PID_IS
```
```plaintext
ruby (22987), 898453 events, 100.0%, 0.000 msec
syscall calls total min avg max stddev
(msec) (msec) (msec) (msec) (%)
--------------- -------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ------
read 6949 1072.940 0.000 0.154 32.835 5.61%
write 19 1.497 0.004 0.079 0.855 55.02%
open 358969 2075.510 0.002 0.006 24.415 1.45%
close 6736 26.939 0.002 0.004 0.102 1.46%
stat 11169 94.922 0.002 0.008 2.574 4.95%
fstat 9003 25.918 0.002 0.003 0.087 0.95%
lstat 35925 163.917 0.002 0.005 2.782 3.04%
poll 16 12.934 0.003 0.808 6.429 56.12%
lseek 271 0.770 0.002 0.003 0.022 5.36%
mmap 214 2.053 0.003 0.010 0.176 9.45%
mprotect 174 2.077 0.003 0.012 0.065 5.19%
munmap 15 0.592 0.007 0.039 0.160 29.49%
brk 1462 26.240 0.003 0.018 0.247 1.74%
rt_sigaction 3 0.018 0.002 0.006 0.013 57.71%
rt_sigprocmask 12 0.043 0.002 0.004 0.012 22.55%
ioctl 3242 9.450 0.002 0.003 0.033 1.37%
access 21 0.123 0.003 0.006 0.018 17.40%
select 29 65.635 0.003 2.263 43.631 66.60%
sched_yield 6 0.032 0.003 0.005 0.013 30.14%
mremap 2 0.079 0.023 0.039 0.055 41.03%
sendfile 2 11.890 4.990 5.945 6.900 16.07%
socket 6 0.049 0.004 0.008 0.012 13.02%
connect 6 0.285 0.013 0.047 0.095 28.69%
sendto 18 0.517 0.004 0.029 0.066 14.21%
recvfrom 43 0.351 0.003 0.008 0.029 13.37%
getsockname 1 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.00%
setsockopt 3 0.012 0.004 0.004 0.004 1.18%
getsockopt 4 0.038 0.003 0.010 0.030 71.75%
clone 4 0.100 0.021 0.025 0.032 10.75%
vfork 6 1.678 0.216 0.280 0.382 9.12%
wait4 6 0.068 0.006 0.011 0.018 18.45%
fcntl 2666 7.253 0.002 0.003 0.067 1.66%
getdents 1070 61.229 0.002 0.057 32.941 53.93%
getcwd 410 4.933 0.002 0.012 0.153 3.85%
chdir 34 0.261 0.003 0.008 0.026 13.11%
mkdir 2 0.329 0.017 0.164 0.312 89.62%
getrusage 1 0.060 0.060 0.060 0.060 0.00%
getuid 2662 11.740 0.002 0.004 0.065 1.89%
getgid 2661 6.467 0.002 0.002 0.025 1.52%
geteuid 2663 6.773 0.002 0.003 0.032 1.78%
getegid 2661 6.163 0.002 0.002 0.031 1.31%
getresuid 6 0.014 0.002 0.002 0.002 1.22%
getresgid 6 0.013 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.71%
futex 36 3.614 0.002 0.100 2.040 56.53%
tgkill 1 0.035 0.035 0.035 0.035 0.00%
pipe2 12 0.075 0.003 0.006 0.018 22.15%
getrandom 1 0.019 0.019 0.019 0.019 0.00%
```
So … the interesting stat here is that `open` is called **358969** times. [stat and family](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/stat.2.html) are called **about 55 thousand** times. When booting Discourse (or any Rails app) there is carnage on the filesystem, it is probably one of the best “read” filesystem benchmarks out there, cause it reads from tons of files in tons of directories and so on.
---
### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2017, 7:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/8 "2017-04-17T19:58:39Z")
Wait there’s more open calls than read + getdents + fstat + fcntl + ioctl combined - what the heck is Ruby doing with all those open files?
And only 6k closes.
Or are those failed open calls?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/9 "2017-04-17T19:59:34Z")
> [@riking](#):
>
> what the heck is Ruby doing with all those open files?
This is an awesome question and is left as an exercise for the reader 🙂
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2017, 12:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/10 "2017-04-18T00:23:28Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> 20 minutes later, this is the result of me running bonnie++ in WSL
Here’s what I got with a blazing fast 960 Pro SSD filesystem
```
jeff@WUMPUS:~$ bonnie++ -f
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...Bonnie: drastic I/O error (rmdir): Directory not empty
Cleaning up test directory after error.
```
For comparison:
```
root@WUMPUS:~# dd bs=1M count=512 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 0.4312 s, 1.2 GB/s
```
---
### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2017, 2:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/11 "2017-04-18T14:16:50Z")
We should at the very least make them aware of this topic. What’s the default contact point for WSL feedback? Please feel free to contact them on our behalf 🙂
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2017, 2:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/12 "2017-04-18T14:47:13Z")
> [@erlend\_sh](#):
>
> We should at the very least make them aware of this topic.
@bitcrazed is the PM, I am pretty sure he is following this discussion and is aware of the problems. He replies here, and pretty sure he is watching this topic.
Improvements are planned 😉
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/13 "2017-11-28T02:35:45Z")
@bitcrazed @shanselman a few months ago we upgraded Discourse to use: [https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap](https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap)
This heavily reduced file IO during boot which results in **acceptable** albeit a bit a bit slower boot performance on Windows in WSL.
Locally I see Discourse boot times of
- 2.2 **seconds** on a VMWare Ubuntu VM
- 4.5 **seconds** on the same machine in WSL
Without bootsnap I was seeing **31** second boot times!
This is quite enormous! It means that WSL is an acceptable option for local development of Discourse (and other Rails applications).
Sure it can be faster but given how ubiquitous, integrated and easy to set up it is this is an endorsable option! Also, keep in mind, Rails is embracing bootsnap and will ship with it from the next version onwards!
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2018, 2:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/14 "2018-08-18T14:41:56Z")
FTR I just installed Discourse in WSL and I was able to install postgresql 10 with no issues at all.
Unicorn still doesn’t work so you have to use puma but other than that, I’d say the UX is acceptable 👍
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2018, 10:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/15 "2018-08-20T22:18:42Z")
@bitcrazed one huge pain point we have now is that we can not use Unicorn at all in WSL per:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982#issuecomment-412730481](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982#issuecomment-412730481)
> **[KGIO issues under WSL](https://yhbt.net/unicorn-public/CAAtdryOtTO8HGTeKLy_JbeRhWLC7JZpCABVpbpEK+z67JHx=ew@mail.gmail.com/T/)**
This means we need special instructions for developers on WSL.
---
### Author:  [@bitcrazed](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bitcrazed)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2018, 11:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/18 "2018-08-22T23:42:59Z")
Hey Sam – best thing to do for WSL issues is file an issue (or update an existing one reporting the same issue) on our GitHub: [https://github.com/microsoft/wsl](https://github.com/microsoft/wsl), and to ping taraj who can triage with the team.
Rich.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2018, 1:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/19 "2018-08-23T01:09:11Z")
No probs … done per: [Ruby unicorn web server is completely broken on WSL · Issue #3496 · microsoft/WSL · GitHub](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3496)
---
### Author:  [@bitcrazed](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bitcrazed)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installation-notes-for-discourse-on-bash-for-windows/48141/20 "2018-08-23T16:33:18Z")
Many thanks Sam. Any chance you can throw an strace up there too? We find them invaluable in tracing exactly what’s failing in your specific setup.
Rich.