Documentation:WSL Windows subsystem for Linux

To get started with Linux you may use WSL. WSL is the Windows SubSystem for Linux that is built into Windows10.

Make sure you have the feature on ; Turn windows features on or off -> Windows Subsystem for Linux

Once you have it on you need a Linux install; we use Ubuntu (22.04 at the time of writing)

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/22.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

You then install .net core (we use .net core 5.0)

sudo apt-get update; \  
  sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https && \
  sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-5.0

This is a good overview: https://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2017/apr/13/running-net-core-apps-under-windows-subsystem-for-linux-bash-for-windows

Remember that your c disk is found here  /mnt/c/

WSL2

WSL2 offers better interaction between Visual Studio and WSL; read more here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/debug-dotnet-core-in-wsl-2?view=vs-2019

Had to install the “.Net Core Debugging with WSL 2” component in Visual Studio Installer (Visual Studio Edition->Modify->Individual Components->.Net Core Debugging with WSL 2

Build MDrivenServer

You need to register a nuget package source to find the VistaDB packages not available on nuget site, this is needed only once:

sudo dotnet nuget add source /mnt/c/capableobjectswush/Xternal/VistaDB --name  XternatVistaDB    

Build the a sln; navigate to the directory, then:

sudo dotnet build

To start MDrivenServer project, navigate to directory:

sudo dotnet run -port=5001 -nohttps -host=ip/domain

What issues have been identified on MDrivenServer:

1. CompactCE is a windows only embedded database - we are looking to replace with a license version of VistaDB. If file App_Data/UseVistaDBIfThisFileExists.xml exists we will now use VistaDB instead of CompactCE
2. All backslashes in filepaths replaced with Path.DirectorySeparatorChar
3. CompactCE connection reads registry and fails on WSL
4. Model checksum is built on modelcontent with a stringbuilder that use \r\n on windows and \n on linux - causing checksum diff
5. Issues with localhost cert forces all tests to be done over http
6. Issues with sending parameters via WSL2-VS-Start ; workaround: program checks for environmentvariable "mdrivenserverport" - if found we use it over http

Issues on Turnkey:

1. Path.DirectorySeparatorChar
2. Issues with sending parameters via WSL2-VS-Start ; workaround: program checks for environmentvariable "mdriventurnkeyport" - if found we use it over http

Deploy on linux

The deploy on linux works much the same as described in the LocalServers description. The reason is that Linux and LocalServers both use the same .net core editions of MDrivenTurnkey and MDrivenServer.

Dlls are platform independant - but exe's are not: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/ - this leads to a separate publish being needed to get the linux distribution:

dotnet publish -r linux-x64 --self-contained false

You can download the Linux distributions from here:

https://mdriven.net/PublicDownloads/MDrivenServerCoreLinux_<version>.zip.

The current version is found here https://mdriven.net/PublicDownloads/MDrivenServerOnCoreVersion.xml

https://mdriven.net/PublicDownloads/MDrivenTurnkeyCoreLinux_<version>.zip.

The current version is found here https://mdriven.net/PublicDownloads/MDrivenTurnkeyOnCoreVersion.xml

You download the server-zip's as described above. In these 2 zips you will find StreaminAppCoreWebApp.dll (TurnkeyServer as dll), and AppCompleteGenericCore.dll (MDrivenServer as dll).

Expand the zips to your desired locations on linux - in two different directories.

Starting on Linux

In order to start the applications you need to install at least dotnet core 3.1 on your linux machine

Start the applications - MDrivenServer first by navigating to the directory of the app and:

dotnet AppCompleteGenericCore.dll -port=5010 -nohttps

Then navigate to the TurnkeyApp directory and:

dotnet StreaminAppCoreWebApp.dll -port=5011 -nohttps

After start you can navigate to the MDrivenServer by using the chosen url - you can log in with user a and pwd 123456

The MDrivenServer does not yet have a model - you upload a model with MDrivenDesigner - after this step you can run the application in the MDrivenTurnkey.

Tips and Tricks

This is no Linux-expert-wiki - but I noticed that the WorkInfo page of MDrivenServer ran into problems while creating bitmaps. It turned out that there was some graphics lib missing on the server, the following fixed it:

sudo apt-get install libgdiplus 
cd /usr/lib 
sudo ln -s libgdiplus.so gdiplus.dll