Install Script and Start Script for Jupyter on LXD on WSL on Windows

by Mike Levin

The WSL 2 LXD install script is done and now I just need a way to get Jupyter started (before I do daemons which I’ll do a video on) after a reboot.

WSL -d Ubuntu-18.04 needs this in its /usr/local/sbin

until
        lxc jupyterstart 2>/dev/null
do
        sleep 1
done

Wow, it’s working. I just silenced jupyterstart with >/dev/null. Just pushed that one. It’s nice to see the visit localhost message on an LXD host login. Speaking of which, the magic command to start Jupyter in the background is reduced to:

wsl -d Ubuntu-18.04 -e bash -c "exit"

You don’t even need to do anything in the session, so you can logout immediately. It just needs to be a bash session so the .bash_profile runs, which in turn runs the /usr/local/sbin/j program, which uses that above program to use an lxd alias… pshwew!

You know those expressions that the ancient magic is often the most powerful. Well that’s poo poo’d by the modern Microsoft crowd who like being forced into proprietary power-tools just to get simple tasks done. But for everyone else, there’s Unix brought to you today in the flavor of Linux, and it’s some powerful ancient magic. I just coded up my greatest spell since Levinux, some 10 years ago. And it’s a better spell-casting and sharing environment than it was back then, so the time is ripe.

Okay, .bat files! Visit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/miklevin/wsl2lxd/main/install.bat

Select all and copy.

Go to your desktop, right-click and select New / Text Document.

Rename that text document install.bat. Be sure you actually give it the file extension. The default mode is to hide known file-extensions which will result in you naming it install.bat.txt which will not work. You may have to go to an explorer window (Win+E) and go to View / Options, click the “View” tab and uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”.

Right-click install.bat and select Edit. Launch with Notepad.

Click in the document, paste and Ctrl+S to save it. You can then close the document. If it warns you, then you didn’t save. Use File / Save from the dropdown menu if needed.

Now just double-click the icon and hit Enter on your keyboard to allow the script to start running. Sit back and wait awhile.

There is no more interactivity until the script is done, at which time it waits for you to hit any key to release the script. The black screen will disappear.

Hit any key to dismiss the install window.

Go to Edge (because we’ll be making an App of it) and visit http://localhost:8888.

Enter the password “foo” and click the Login button.

Click … / Apps / Install this site as an app

Okay, this takes care of the install and first run. But on subsequent runs there needs to be a way to start the server.

Right-click on your desktop and select New / Text Document. Rename it to start.bat and put this inside:

wsl -d Ubuntu-18.04 -e bash -lic "exit"

Now after any fresh restart of your machine or accidental closing of the Jupyter server, you can get it running again just by double-clicking this icon.

I’m still making sure that’s solid. If it doesn’t work, open a COM or PowerShell window and type:

wsl -d Ubuntu-18.04

…which will log you into the WSL “outer” Linux whose .bash_profile should automatically start the Jupyter server in the LXD “inner” Linux.

Okay, wow this has been epic. Many echoes of Levinux. Walk away from it for a little bit. I’ve got some other work to do. Test the install process one more time just to make sure its latest status is proven working and percolating in the background for next steps… done!