Running spinningup in Linux Subsystem on Windows (Success)

[ibrahiminfinite]

For people who are on windows 10 and do not have linux but want to make things work.

1. you can enable the WSL in your windows 10 following this.
2. Install Xming X window server for windows from here. and make sure it is running.
3. Once WSL is working :
   Open cmd, type in "bash", this will switch the cmd to WSL terminal, then run the following it will enable GUI for WSL .
   Copied from this stackoverflow answer.

    sudo apt-get install x11-apps
    export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 
    nano ~/.bashrc  #(add  export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0   at the end. Ctrl+X to exit/save)
    sudo apt-get install gnome-calculator #will get you GTK

4. Download miniconda for linux from here. It will be an ".sh" file.
5. from the terminal go to the folder you downloaded the file to and run "bash <name_of_downloaded_file>", this will install conda.
6. follow the spinningup tutorial for rest of installation.

[jachiam]

Awesome! Thanks for doing this. I've updated the installation page to reference this issue, so others can follow your instructions.

[TheoryofEverthing]

Thanks!

[mikeydavison]

Works as advertised. I did have to install Open GL prior to running the animated examples though. The exact name of the package escapes me but it is explicitly mentioned in the error message that occurred when running the example. Fantastic work here. Thanks for sharing!

[debadeepta]

It was this package: sudo apt-get install python-opengl

[FernandoTN]

Thanks, so far so good.

[rastringer]

This is fantastic, thank you

[alanjfs]

Has anyone tried using Microsoft's version of MPI?

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/message-passing-interface/microsoft-mpi

[daniele-niero]

Awesome! Thanks for doing this. I've updated the installation page to reference this issue, so others can follow your instructions.

Spinning Up should also work on Windows though. Limiting its usage to Linux and Mac means shutting the door to many potential users, contributors and people that eager to learn.
Even if we all agree that Windows is a lesser system, we can't deny that is widely spread one, one that teaching material such as Spinning Up shouldn't ignore.

[zengzhi2015]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I have just one question left. If we install spinning up in this way on WSL, could we still use GPU-version Pytorch?

[kevin5k]

First of all, its great you linked the WSL installation on SpinUp's page. I have git cloned and setup the latest Spinup in both my Conda environment (Win10) and Ubuntu (WSL). But despite following the Installation instructions diligently, I am having issues with executing the "installtest" program. An excerpt of the error message is attached below. On the other hand, it works perfectly fine on my native Linux machine.

=======================
This is the traceback message"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/dreamcore/Development/spinningup/spinup/utils/run_entrypoint.py", line 10, in
thunk = pickle.loads(zlib.decompress(base64.b64decode(args.encoded_thunk)))
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'spinup'"

Anyone advice?

[ibrahiminfinite]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I have just one question left. If we install spinning up in this way on WSL, could we still use GPU-version Pytorch?

I only tried running it on CPU, never tried GPU from WSL.
It @zengzhi2015 it would be great if you could test it out and let us know.

Edit : It looks like WSL does not support GPU by default.
someone has suggested a solution here

[zengzhi2015]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I have just one question left. If we install spinning up in this way on WSL, could we still use GPU-version Pytorch?

I only tried running it on CPU, never tried GPU from WSL.
It @zengzhi2015 it would be great if you could test it out and let us know.

Hi, it is sadly found that GPU pass through in WSL is currently NOT possible.
See this discussion.

Though there are some tricks to use GPU powered python programs in WSL, these programs are actually running in Windows. Thus, these tricks are useless for spinningup.
See this article.

[kevin5k]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I have just one question left. If we install spinning up in this way on WSL, could we still use GPU-version Pytorch?

I only tried running it on CPU, never tried GPU from WSL.
It @zengzhi2015 it would be great if you could test it out and let us know.

Hi, it is sadly found that GPU pass through in WSL is currently NOT possible.
See this discussion.

Though there are some tricks to use GPU powered python programs in WSL, these programs are actually running in Windows. Thus, these tricks are useless for spinningup.
See this article.

Thanks for the info.