Running the dockerised VCE on Windows - innovationOUtside/tm351vm-binder GitHub Wiki

Microsoft Windows 10

This page includes sections on:

• Installation
  • Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education
  • Windows 10 (Home)
• Running docker and installing the VCE
• Known Issues
  • Win10 runs very slowly after installing WSL and Docker

Installation

Installation may vary slightly depneding on what version of Windows you are running

Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education

For Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education users, follow the instructions on the Docker website for how to Install Docker Desktop on Windows. This will require you to:

• Download the Docker installation package
• Double click the installation package to run it
• Check your virtualisation settings:
  • Enable Hyper-V settings if they are not already enabled
• Start the Docker application:
  • search for Docker, and select Docker Desktop in the search results.

Windows 10 (Home)

For Windows 10 (Home) users, follow the instructions on the Docker website for how to Install Docker Desktop on Windows Home. This will require you to:

• Check your version of Windows 10 (version 2004 or higher is required)
• Check that hardware assisted virtualisation is supported and enabled (hardware assisted virtualisation diagnostics tool).
  • If virtualisation is available and not enabled, you will need to enable it. The actual approach may depend on your computer, but general guidance can be found here: How can I enable virtualisation (VT) on my PC?
• Download and install the WSL2 Linux Kernel update
• Download the Docker installation package, double click it and follow the installation prompts, making sure you select the Enable WSL 2 Features option on the Configuration page.
• Start the Docker application:
  • search for Docker, and select Docker Desktop in the search results.

If you are running an earlier version of Windows than Windows 10 Pro / Enterprise / Education / Home (2004+), you may still be able to run Docker using the Docker Toolbox. This application is due to be retired in late 2020, but it may hang around for a little while after that...

Running docker and installing the VCE

With Docker installed, all Windows users should now be able to download the VCE container image from the Docker Hub, From the Command Prompt / terminal, run the command:

docker pull ousefuldemos ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm351:current

This will download a Docker container image from which individual Docker containers can be instantiated. The download may take some time (up to 20 minutes depending on your network connection). You should only need to download the original image once.

To share files between your host computer, we recommend you create a folder at the following standard location:

C:\Users\your-username\TM351VCE

This folder can be used to share files between your host computer and the VCE container.

Jupyter notebook files, data files and other project files downloaded from the VLE or created otherwise can be placed inside the TM351VCE directory and will be available inside the VCE environment. Files saved to the shared directory from the VCE are save to the host desktop and will persist even if the container is stopped or destroyed.

Known Issues

The following issues have been reported:

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Win10 runs very slowly after installing WSL and Docker

A fix described in How to Stop WSL2 from Hogging All Your Ram With Docker suggests:

1. creating a .wslconfig file in c:\users\*your your profile name* containing the lines:

[wsl2]
memory=4GB # Limits VM memory in WSL 2 to 4 GB
processors=2 # Makes the WSL 2 VM use two virtual processors

2. from Powershell with admin rights, restart WSL2 by typing: Restart-Service LxssManager

You should be okay setting memory=2GB although you may find things, particularly in the second half of the course, run more smoothly by setting memory=4GB

[contributed]

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