BeetleboxCI Free Installation on WSL2

While BeetleboxCI Free is built to run on Linux, it is possible to run it in Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) to experiment with its functionality. WSL2 is a lightweight VM that allows Linux applications to run on Windows. Please note that BeetleboxCI is only compatible with WSL2, not, WSL1.

For the enterprise installation, please refer to this guide: BeetleboxCI Enterprise Installation on WSL2

Mininum requirements for installing BeetleboxCI Enterprise:

An x64/x86_64/AMD64/Intel 64 system
At least 4 CPUs
At least 16GB RAM

Recommended:

An x64/x86_64/AMD64/Intel 64 system
At least 12 CPUs
At least 32GB RAM

Introduction

This guide describes the process of installing the free version of BeetleboxCI on WSL2.

Installing BeetleboxCI

You can sign up and download the installer here: BeetleboxCI.

The tarball contains a self-extracting executable that will install the application.

Run Windows Powershell as an administrator.
Ensure that WSL Ubuntu is not currently installed by running the following commands. You may need to check the Windows settings too and uninstall from the Apps and features list.
```
wsl --shutdown
wsl --unregister Ubuntu
```
Run the following commands to ensure that the latest version of WSL is installed and that WSL2 is set as the default version for creating Linux instances.
```
wsl --update
wsl --set-default-version 2
```
Run the following commands to install Ubuntu on WSL2. This installs Ubuntu by default. For other operating systems, the name of the operating system must be explicitly specified. You will be prompted to create an Ubuntu user account.
```
wsl --install 
```
Test that networking and DNS are working correctly. If any errors are shown here, the networking is not working correctly and it will need to be resolved before proceeding.
```
ping www.google.com
```
Edit the wsl.conf file:
```
sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf
```
Add the following information. The hostname will be the same as your Windows machine, though if the hostname of your Windows machine has uppercase characters, you will need to change them to lowercase here. However, you should not rename the machine completely, as the WSL2 instance will not work if it is given a completely different name.
```
[network]
hostname = lower-case-hostname
generateHosts = false
```
Exit the WSL2 instance using the following command:
```
exit
```
Shutdown and restart the instance:
```
wsl --shutdown
wsl
```
Copy the BeetleboxCI installer over to the WSL2 instance. If your distribution is called Ubuntu, then you can access the root of the WSL2 filesystem on the Windows file browser through \\wsl$\Ubuntu. We recommend placing the installer in \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home[username]. You can then proceed to install the BeetleboxCI application, though there are a few different steps compared to directly installing on Linux.

Extract the tarball using a terminal and enter the folder that gets extracted:
```
tar -xzvf BeetleboxCIv*.tar.gz
cd clean_install/
```
Run the BeetleboxCIv*.run file.
You will be prompted to "Enter the path of parameter file". We recommend leaving this blank to select the default file that is bundled with the download unless you have a specific reason to customise the installation.
To access the application within the (virtual) machine where you installed BeetleboxCI, open a web browser and navigate to http://[WSL_IP_ADDRESS]:32767. To find out of the IP of the WSL2 instance, run:
```
hostname -I | awk '{print $1}
```
If you are accessing the app for the first time, you will be prompted to create a superuser account. You can log in once you create the superuser account.