Ingram Cloud Lab

Setting Up a Cloud Lab on Windows with WSL

Written by

marilyn_ingram

in

I use a Windows laptop, and Ansible only runs on Linux. The solution is WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which runs Ubuntu right inside Windows. Here’s how I set up everything for my cloud lab, including the beginner mistakes I made along the way.

1. Install Ubuntu with WSL

In PowerShell (run as administrator):

wsl --install

After a restart, Ubuntu asked me to create a username and password.

Beginner lesson: Linux shows nothing when you type a password. No dots, no stars. I thought my keyboard wasn’t working. It was.

2. Get files from Windows into Linux

Windows drives show up inside Ubuntu under /mnt/c. My first copy command failed because I typed the placeholder YOURNAME literally instead of my actual Windows username. This command found the file for me:

find /mnt/c/Users -maxdepth 3 -name homelab.zip 2>/dev/null

Beginner lesson: anything in ALL CAPS in a tutorial command is usually a placeholder you need to replace.

3. Install the tools

I installed four tools: Ansible, Git, Terraform, and the Azure CLI. Then I checked each one:

ansible --version
git --version
terraform -version
az version

My Ubuntu version was so new that some installers didn’t support it yet, so I pointed Terraform’s installer at the previous Ubuntu release, which worked fine.

4. Sign in to Azure and GitHub

WSL can’t open a Windows browser on its own, so for both the Azure CLI and the GitHub CLI, I copied the sign-in link or code into my browser manually.

az login
gh auth login

What I’d tell another beginner

  • Read every error message. Most of them say exactly what’s wrong.
  • Replace placeholders before running commands.
  • Check each step worked before moving to the next one.
  • Closing Ubuntu keeps your files, but you’ll need to re-run any export commands next time.

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