Tag: Linux

Dec192019December 19, 2019December 19, 20193Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Surface Pro X Windows 10 on ARM WSL 2

How to Install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM

Posted in Hardware, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Surface, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10

This is just a quick blog post about the experience on running the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) on Windows 10 on ARM, which comes on devices like the Surface Pro X. Since I got many questions from developers and IT Pros about the Surface Pro X and how it can handle different workflows on Windows 10 on ARM, I decided to write a blog post, on how you can install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X.

Requirements

You need a device that runs Windows 10 on ARM like the Surface Pro X. Yes, WSL 2 works on the Surface Pro X, and you can run Ubuntu 18.04, which comes as an ARM compiled distro. But you will need to install at Windows Insider build (19041 or higher, also known as Windows 10 20H1 or Windows 10 version 2004). And yes, if you are running an Intel or AMD based machine, you can also install and run WSL 2 on Windows 10.

Install Windows 10 on ARM Windows Insider Build

Install Windows 10 on ARM Windows Insider Build

To run Windows 10 Insider Builds, you can go to Settings, Update & Security, and the Windows Insider Program and join the program. If you get asked to choose the Ring, you will need to select the Insider Slow Ring. You will need to reboot your machine and check for updates, to install the Windows Insider builds.

Install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM

To install the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), you need to follow these tasks.

  • Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux Optional feature (WSL 1 and WSL 2)
  • Install a distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Enable the ‘Virtual Machine Platform’ optional feature (WSL 2)
  • Configure the distro to use WSL 2

Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Virtual Machine Platform

Windows 10 on ARM Control Panel WSL2

Windows 10 on ARM Control Panel WSL2

You can enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and the Virtual Machine Platform feature in the Control Panel or with PowerShell.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
 
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

These commands will need a reboot of the machine.

Install a Linux distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you don’t already have installed a WSL distro, you can download and install it from the Windows 10 store. You can find more here: Crazy times – You can now run Linux on Windows 10 from the Windows Store.

Install Ubuntu ARM WSL 2 Windows Store on the Surface Pro X

Install Ubuntu ARM WSL 2 Windows Store on the Surface Pro X

If you want to run a full Ubuntu virtual machine on Windows 10 Hyper-V, you can check out my blog post.

Set WSL distro to use version 2

After you completed the first two steps, you will need to configure the distro to use WSL 2. Run the following command to list the available distros in PowerShell:

wsl -l -v

If this command doesn’t work with the -v parameter, you don’t have the right Windows 10 build installed.

To set a distro to WSL 2, you can run the following command:

wsl --set-version DistroName 2
Convert to WSL 2

Convert to WSL 2

You can also set WSL 2 as the default. You can also run the command before you start the Linux distro for the first time, which will give you faster setup speeds.

wsl --set-default-version 2

To find out more about installing WSL 2, check out the Microsoft Docs page.

After you have enabled WSL 2 you can see that WSL 1 was running kernel version 4.4.0.

WSL 1 Kernel Version

WSL 1 Kernel Version

 

WSL 2 is running Linux kernel version 4.19.84

WSL 2 Kernel Version

WSL 2 Kernel Version

You can also see, that this is an ARM version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu ARM

Ubuntu ARM

Conclusion

I hope this helps you and gives you a quick overview on how you can install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments and check out the WSL 2 FAQ. The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Kernel is also open-source, you can follow the project on GitHub.

By the way, you can now also start using Docker Desktop together with the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 and even use WSL 2 on Windows Server.


Oct082019October 8, 2019October 7, 20197Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Azure IaaS VM enable Update Management

How to Manage Updates for Azure IaaS VMs

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, System Center, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server

As a lot of customers are moving their workloads to Azure and specifically moving virtual machines to Azure Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the question is how do I manage my Azure virtual machines (VMs) efficiently. The great thing about Azure IaaS, it is not just another virtualization platform. Azure IaaS also offers a lot of other benefits versus classic virtualization. Azure IaaS and Azure Management provide a lot of functionality to it make it more efficient to run and manage virtual machines. One of them is Azure Update Management. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can efficiently manage updates for your Azure IaaS VMs.

Overview and benefits Azure Update Management ☁

The Azure Update Management solution is part of Azure Automation. And with Azure Update Management you can manage operating system updates for your Windows and Linux computers in Azure, in on-premises environments, or in other cloud providers. That is right, it is not only for your Azure VMs, it also works with all your environment and provides you with a single pane of glass for your Update Management. It allows you to quickly assess the status of available updates on all virtual machines and servers, and manage the process of installing required updates for servers.

  • Azure Update Management works with Azure IaaS VMs, on-premise servers and even servers running at other cloud service providers.
  • Update Management supports Linux and Windows servers
  • It is directly integrated into the Azure portal and onboarding of Azure VMs is very simple.
  • It works with existing update sources like Microsoft Update, WSUS or on Linux with private and public update repositories.
  • Azure Update Management can be integrated into System Center Configuration Manager. You can learn more about Azure Update Management and System Center Configuration Manager integration on Microsoft Docs.
  • You can onboard new Azure VMs automatically to Update Management in multiple subscriptions in the same tenant.
Architecture

Architecture

How to onboard Azure IaaS VMs ✈

Onboarding Azure VMs to Azure Update Management is fairly simple and there are many different ways you can enable Update Management for an Azure VM.

One thing I want to highlight is, that you can set up automatic enablement for future virtual machines. With that Azure virtual machines, you create in the future, will automatically be added to the Update Mangement solution.

Onboarding

Onboarding

Since this blog post is all about managing updates for Azure VMs, I will keep it short, but if you want to add servers running on-premises or at other service providers, you can have a look how you can configure Azure Update management from Windows Admin Center. If you are running Azure Stack, you can also easily add your Azure Stack VMs to the Update Management solution.

Update Assesment 📃

Azure Update Management Compliant Assessment

Azure Update Management Compliant Assessment

After you have enabled and connected your virtual machines, Azure Log Analytics and Update Management start to collect data and analyze it and creates a continuous assessment of your Azure VM infrastructure and the additional servers you added. It will let you know which servers are compliant and which updates are missing. In the Azure documentation for Azure Update Management, you can find the schedules and time new updates will be added to the assessment.

Manage and deploy updates to Azure VMs 🔧

After you know which servers are compliant or not, you can schedule an update deployment, to update your servers.

Update Azure VMs using Update Deployment

Update Azure VMs using Update Deployment

An update deployment configuration is done very easily.

  1. Enter a name for the update deployment
  2. Select which operating system you want to target with the deployment (Linux or Windows)
  3. Choose the machines you want to update. You can select specific Azure virtual machines, non-Azure machines, groups, AD, WSUS, SCCM groups and filters.
  4. Select the Update Classifications you want to deploy
  5. Include or exclude updates
  6. Schedule the deployment. You can also create recurring update deployments for example for monthly patching.
  7. Configure pre- and post-scripts
  8. Configure the maintenance window size
  9. Configure the reboot update after the updates are installed

View update deployments ✔

Update Azure VMs Status

Update Azure VMs Status

During and after the duration of the update deployment, you can see an overview of the deployment, which updates on which machine were installed and if they were successful.

Pricing – What does it cost? 💵

Now I know what you are thinking now, this is great, but I am sure Microsoft is making me pay for this. No! there are no charges for the service, you only pay for log data stored in the Azure Log Analytics service. You can find more pricing information here.

Conclusion and Learn more 🎓

Update Management is a great solution to keep your environment up to date. If you want to know more, check out Microsoft Docs or follow this tutorial to onboard Azure VMs. There is also a very good blog series by Microsoft MVP Samuel Erskine. If you don’t have Azure today, create an Azure Free account.

Free Azure Account

Create free Azure Account ☁

Create your Azure free account today and get started with 12 months of free services!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments.


Aug012019August 1, 2019August 4, 201917Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview

Run Linux Containers with Docker Desktop and WSL 2

Posted in Containers, Docker, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server

Today, Docker launched the first Tech Preview of the Docker Desktop WSL 2. This means you can now use Docker Desktop and the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) which is using the hypervisor in the background to run Linux containers on Windows 10. With the significant changes to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, you can now take advantage of these improvements with your Docker Desktop client.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 is currently in Tech Preview, and it also requires the Windows 10 Insider Preview builds. That means you should only use for not production environments.

WSL 2 introduces a significant architectural change as it is a full Linux kernel built by Microsoft, allowing Linux containers to run natively without emulation. With Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview, users can access Linux workspaces without having to maintain both Linux and Windows build scripts.

Docker Desktop also leverages the dynamic memory allocation feature in WSL 2 to greatly improve the resource consumption. This means, Docker Desktop only uses the required amount of CPU and memory resources, enabling CPU and memory-intensive tasks such as building a container to run much faster.

You can find more information about the Tech Preview here.

Prerequisites

To run the Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview, you will need to set up the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) first. You can do that using the following guide, or follow these steps:

Install Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18932 or later.

Install the Windows WSL feature and the Windows Virtual Machine Platform feature running the following commands:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
 
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

Download WSL Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 18.04 from the Microsoft Store. You can read more about Linux on Windows 10 here. The distribution needs to be set as the default WSL distro.

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

Make sure that the WSL distro is running in WSL 2 mode. You can check the list of distros installed on your Windows 10 machine, with the following PowerShell command:

wsl -l -v

To set the distro to WSL 2, you can run the following command. Change the name of the distro:

wsl --set-version DistroName 2
Install WSL 2

Install WSL 2

To find out more about installing WSL 2, check out the Microsoft Docs page.

How to set up Docker and WSL 2

First, you will need to download the Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview here. Make sure you already configured all the WSL 2 steps described in the prerequisites, before you install the Docker WSL 2 Tech preview. If you are prompted if you want to use Linux containers or Windows containers during the installation, select Windows containers. If you choose Linux containers, you will have the classic Docker experience with a Hyper-V VM.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview Menu

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview Menu

Run the installation wizard, and after a successful installation, the Docker Desktop menu displays the WSL 2 Tech Preview option. You can select WSL 2 Tech Preview from that menu to start and configure the daemon running WSL 2.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview

You can switch between the classic daemon or the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 with the following commands:

# Switch to classic deamon
 
docker context use default
 
# Switch to WSL 2
 
docker context use wsl
Linux Container on Windows 10

Linux Containers on Windows 10

You can now also do crazy things like run SQL Server on Linux in a Docker container on Windows 10.

SQL Server on Linux Docker Container Windows 10 WSL 2

SQL Server on Linux Docker Container Windows 10 WSL 2

I hope this gives you a good overview of how you will be able to run Linux containers on Windows in the future. Again this is still a Tech Preview, and we might see many changes to that feature. If you want to know more, read the full blog post on the Docker page. Also, check out the current Linux Container on Windows documentation. If you any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


Jul222019July 22, 2019July 22, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
SSH Remote Edit File with Visual Studio Code

Remote Edit Files on Azure Linux VMs using VS Code

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Virtualization, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10

There are a lot of different ways to remote manage your Azure virtual machines using various tools and technics. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can remotely edit files on Azure Linux virtual machines using Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code has a new Remote Development Extention which allows you to open any folder in a container, on a remote computer, or in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and take advantage of the VS Code feature set. With the Remote – SSH extensions, you can easily browse and edit files on an Azure VM or any other system where you can connect using SSH.

Installation

As mentioned to edit the files on the Azure Linux virtual machine remotely, we are using the light-weight, cross-platform, opensource editor Visual Studio Code. You can download and install VS Code from the official website.

Visual Studio Code Remote Development Extension

In addition to Visual Studio code, we need to install the Remote – SSH extension, which comes with Remote Development Extension Pack. This also includes remote extensions for containers or the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

If you are running on a Windows 10 machine, you will also need to install the OpenSSH client on your machine. You can do that going through this blog post, or by running this command.

# Install the OpenSSH Client
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0

Azure VM connection using SSH

The Remote – SSH extensions currently only supports connecting to x86_64 Linux-based SSH servers using key-based authentication.

Optional: Create Azure Linux VM with key-based SSH authentication using the Azure CLI

Create Azure Linux VM Azure CLI SSH Keys DNS Name

If you want to try it out, and you haven’t set up a Linux VM SSH and key-based authentication. This Azure CLI command here helps you to create a new Azure virtual machine and sets up ssh keys as well as an optional unique Azure DNS name.

az vm create --resource-group demosshvm --name tomsVM --image UbuntuLTS --admin-username thomas --generate-ssh-keys --public-ip-address-dns-name tomsazurelinuxvm

In this example, you can use the public IP address or the Azure FQDN to connect to the Azure VM. If you have a VPN or Express Route set up, you can also use private IP addresses and DNS names. If you are using public IP addresses in production, make sure you are using a service like Azure Just in Time VM access.

Connect Visual Studio Code to Azure VM using SSH

After you have installed Visual Studio Code, the Remote – SSH extension, the SSH client and have a VM with key-based authentication, you can now easily connect. Open Visual Studio Code, on the bottom left, you see the Remote connection button. If you press it, you will find the remoting options. Select “Remote-SSH: Connect to Host…”

Visual Studio Open Remote SSH Connection

This will ask you for the username and IP address or DNS name of the virtual machine. In my case, I am going to use the DNS name.

Visual Studio Code SSH Remoting Connection

 

After pressing enter, this will connect your Visual Studio Code environment to the Azure virtual machine.

Visual Studio Code SSH Connection

 

Remote edit files on Azure Linux VMs using VS Code

You can start opening folders and files on the remote Azure Linux VM and begin browsing the file system. On the bottom left, you see the name or IP address of the machine you are connected with.

SSH Remote File System Visual Studio Code

You can also open files and start remote edit files on your Azure Linux VM. If you save the changes you made to the file, this is directly saved on the remote Azure virtual machine.

SSH Remote Edit File with Visual Studio Code

You get all the advanced VS Code features you know from your local Visual Studio Code like syntax-highlighting and more.

I hope this shows you an easy way to remotely edit files on your Azure Linux virtual machines using Visual Studio Code and SSH. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Jul102019July 10, 2019July 10, 20196Commentsby Thomas Maurer
PowerShell 7 Installer

How to Install and Update PowerShell 7

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Software, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Work

Currently, you can install the cross-platform version PowerShell Core 6 on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Early April the PowerShell team announced the next release called PowerShell 7. PowerShell 7 is built on .NET Core 3 and brings back many APIs required by modules built on .NET Framework so that they work with .NET Core runtime. While PowerShell Core 6 was focusing on bringing cross-platform compatibility, PowerShell 7 will focus on making it a viable replacement for Windows PowerShell 5.1 and bringing near parity with Windows PowerShell. Here is how you can install and update PowerShell 7 (preview) on Windows and Linux using a simple one-liner.

If you want to know more about the roadmap, check out Steves blog post.

One great example of how cross-platform PowerShell can work, check out my blog post: How to set up PowerShell SSH Remoting.

Install PowerShell 7 (Preview)

As mentioned PowerShell 7 is currently in preview. You can download and install it manually from GitHub. However, the easiest way to install it is to use the following one-liners created by Steve Lee (Microsoft Principal Software Engineer Manager in the PowerShell Team). You can also use the same one-liners with different parameters to install the current GA version of PowerShell 6.

If you are installing the PowerShell 7 Preview, this will be a side by side installation with PowerShell 6. You can use the pwsh-preview command to run version 7.

One-liner to install or update PowerShell 7 on Windows 10

Install and Update PowerShell 7

You can use this single command in Windows PowerShell to install PowerShell 7. The difference between the installation of version 6 versus version 7 is the -Preview flag.

iex "& { $(irm https://aka.ms/install-powershell.ps1) } -UseMSI -Preview"

There are additional switches to, for example, install daily builds of the latest PowerShell previews.

-Destination
The destination path to install PowerShell Core to.

-Daily
Install PowerShell Core from the daily build.
Note that the ‘PackageManagement’ module is required to install a daily package.

-Preview
Install the latest preview, which is currently version 7. This will

-UseMSI
Use the MSI installer.

-Quiet
The quiet command for the MSI installer.

-DoNotOverwrite
Do not overwrite the destination folder if it already exists.

-AddToPath
On Windows, add the absolute destination path to the ‘User’ scope environment variable ‘Path’;
On Linux, make the symlink ‘/usr/bin/pwsh’ points to “$Destination/pwsh”;
On MacOS, make the symlink ‘/usr/local/bin/pwsh’ points to “$Destination/pwsh”.

One-liner to install or update PowerShell 7 on Linux

Install PowerShell 7 on Linux

You can use this as a single command to install PowerShell 7 on Linux

wget https://aka.ms/install-powershell.sh; sudo bash install-powershell.sh -preview; rm install-powershell.sh

Depending on your distro you are using, this will register Microsoft’s pkg repos and install that package (deb or rpm).

You can also use the following switches:

-includeide
Installs VSCode and VSCode PowerShell extension (only relevant to machines with a desktop environment)

-interactivetesting
Do a quick launch test of VSCode (only applicable when used with -includeide)

-skip-sudo-check
Use sudo without verifying its availability (hard to accurately do on some distros)

-preview
Installs the latest preview release of PowerShell side-by-side with any existing production releases

To currently run the PowerShell Preview, you can run the following command:

pwsh-preview

After Installing

After you have installed PowerShell 7, also make sure to update PowerShellGet and the PackageManagement module.

Remember PowerShell 7 is still currently in preview, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Jun262019June 26, 2019June 26, 20191Commentby Thomas Maurer
Ubuntu VM on Windows 10

How to create an Ubuntu VM on Windows 10

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10

Windows 10 is not just a modern desktop operating system, and it also has some great IT Pro and Developer related features build in. One of them is client Hyper-V. This is the same hypervisor which powers virtualization in Windows Server and the Microsoft Azure datacenters. With Hyper-V, you can create virtual machines running on Windows 10, without the need for third-party software. You can not just run Windows virtual machines, and you can also run Linux virtual machines. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can create an Ubuntu VM on Windows 10 using Hyper-V.

If you want to know more about Hyper-V on Windows 10, check out the Microsoft Docs.

Install Hyper-V

First, you will need to install Hyper-V on your Windows 10 computer. Hyper-V on Windows 10 has the following requirements:

  • Windows 10 Enterprise, Professional, or Education (Home does not have the Hyper-V feature included)
  • 64-bit Processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
  • CPU support for VM Monitor Mode Extension (VT-c on Intel CPU’s)
  • Minimum of 4 GB memory

The easiest way to enable Hyper-V on Windows 10 is to run the following PowerShell command as an administrator:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

After you have installed Hyper-V, you need to restart your computer.

Create an Ubuntu virtual machine on Windows 10

To create an Ubuntu virtual machine on Windows 10 Hyper-V, you could download the Ubuntu ISO file and install it like any operating system. However, there is a much easier way, using the Hyper-V Quick Create feature. In the Hyper-V VM Gallery, you will find not just two Windows 10 virtual machines; you will also currently find Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 19.04. These are prepared Hyper-V virtual machines images, ready for you to download and install.

Ubuntu Hyper-V VM Images

Select the Ubuntu version you want to install and click on Create Virtual Machine. This will start downloading the virtual machine image.

Downloading Ubuntu Hyper-V VM Image

After the image is downloaded, you can either connect to the virtual machine and start it, or you can first modify the virtual machine settings.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Hyper-V VM

Optional: If you click on Edit settings, you will be able to configure the virtual machine hardware settings like vCPU or vRAM. You can also enable Secure Boot. If you enable Secure Boot for a Linux virtual machine, make sure you change the Secure Boot template to Microsoft UEFI Certificate Authority.

Ubuntu Hyper-V UEFI Secure Boot Settings

You can now start the Ubuntu VM.

Start Ubuntu hyper-V VM

 

This will boot you in the Ubuntu installation, where you can set up your Ubuntu operating system.

Install Ubuntu VM

All the specific Hyper-V drivers for Ubuntu, are already included in the image. This allows you to use features like Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode, which enables you also to use copy-paste, and others.

Ubuntu VM on Windows 10

I hope this gives you a step-by-step guide, how you can create an Ubuntu VM on Windows 10 using Hyper-V. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.



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    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.

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