Visual COBOL devhub 8 on WSL

Hello canthonyparkinson,

WSL2 support has been added and tested in Visual COBOL 8.0 for Ubuntu 20.04. Please see this page for information about "Installing in an Ubuntu WSL2 on Windows".

We don't claim or test support for other Operating Systems or Versions with this release. While we haven't tested Visual COBOL 8.0 with SUSE Linux, we are not aware of any specific reason that it could not work. Please let us know how it goes if you try using DevHub 8.0 on SUSE Linux under WSL2.

This is not helpful.  It is for installing eclipse in WSL2 (only available on Windows 11, we are not there!)   The scenario I was interested in was to use Eclipse on Windows itself "remoting" to devhub on the WSL instance.

My apologies for the confusion, and thank you for clarifying your intended use case.

I will confirm whether using Visual COBOL for Eclipse 8.0 on Windows 10, with Visual COBOL Development Hub 8.0 installed inside a Windows 10 WSL2 instance running SUSE, is supported.

Please let me know if there are any corrections to the above summary.

Hello  canthonyparkinson,

I have some additional information for you. First as mentioned before, Micro Focus has only tested using WSL in Visual COBOL 8.0, with Ubuntu 20.04. However, we know of some customers who have been using it with other Linux distributions with earlier products (prior to 8.0), and we are not aware of any specific reason that it should not work.

Although Micro Focus has not tested the combination that you've asked about (Visual COBOL for Eclipse 8.0 on Windows 10, connecting remotely to DevHub 8.0 on SUSE Linux within WSL), we don’t know of any reasons this shouldn’t work. If an issue is reported, we’ll make reasonable commercial efforts to research the matter and if required, resolve any issues in our software. For combinations we have not specifically tested, Micro Focus may require additional time to setup a matching environment before any investigation can commence.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions about this.

I have tried to set this up, both for WSL Distros Ubuntu-20.04 and openSUSE-42.  For Ubuntu-20.04, I cannot download the devhub install since that is not we are licensed to.  For openSUSE-42, I cannot get it to recognize by devhub license file.

Micro Focus License Administration
==================================
[Aug 1, 2022, 3:35:03 PM] v10000.3.00760

Welcome to the Micro Focus License Administration utility.
Please select an option from the menu below.

1. Online Authorization.
2. Check License Status.
3. Advanced Configuration Options.
4. Manual License Installation.
5. Uninstall Licenses.
6. Get Machine Id.
7. Commute/Return Licenses.
8. Get License Details.

99. Exit

Enter Option: 4
Install licenses ...
You should have obtained licenses from the Micro Focus activation website
and put them into text file accessible from this computer.

Enter path of file containing new licenses or <Return> to abort: ./VC_Eclipse_2729979.mflic
Installing
### Unable to install - Unable to manage licenses in license manager that is not running on localhost.

Hello canthonyparkinson,

OpenSUSE is not listed in our documentation as one of the Linux/Unix Operating Systems we explicitly test and support, but based on your interest I'm checking to confirm about the level of support we can provide for OpenSUSE. From prior Support Cases, I had the impression you were using SLES, rather than OpenSUSE for your application. Have you switched to using OpenSUSE for your application, or are you simply hoping for some SUSE-compatible WSL environment to simplify your development configuration?

Speaking generally about the problem you mentioned with licensing, we've seen something similar with sometimes not being able to install Safenet licenses. Here are some suggested steps about that. In the /var/microfocuslicensing/bin directory, there is a file named ces.ini. Occasionally, we've seen issues where this file may not have the proper setting to allow Safenet licensing to be used. Here is an example of a file showing a problem with the lshost entry:

  /var/microfocuslicensing/bin/ces.ini contents.

 [ENVIRONMENT]

lshost =

activateservername=http://activate.microfocus.com/rms/activate.aspx

lsfile=/var/microfocuslicensing/bin/lservrc.stn

lsnetfile=/var/microfocuslicensing/bin/lservrc.net

errordisplaylevel=Verbose

autopasshost=127.0.0.1

autopassport=50561

If you find that your ces.ini file is similar to the above, please try modifying that lshost line to instead say:

 "lshost = 127.0.0.1"

Then, please stop and restart the licensing by (with root permissions) running the script restartboth.sh, which in the same directory.

Now that the licensing is updated, please try again to install your license. Please let me know if that gets you past the licensing issue.

lshost =

activateservername=http://activate.microfocus.com/rms/activate.aspx

lsfile=/var/microfocuslicensing/bin/lservrc.stn

lsnetfile=/var/microfocuslicensing/bin/lservrc.net

errordisplaylevel=Verbose

autopasshost=127.0.0.1

autopassport=50561

We are still on SLES 12, the WSL SLES install has strange issues so I switched to OpenSUSE just for WSL.

here is what happens when I try to install devhub on SLES12 WSL

PC1L0Z6T:~ # ./setup_visualcobol_devhub_8.0_suse_x64
-=-==================================================================-=-
Micro Focus Product - Product Extractor
www.microfocus.com

Please Wait.
Performing Product and Platform Checks...

ERROR - The following required 64bit software was not detected on machine:

ed (CMD: which ed)

Install x86_64 version of above packages and re-run installer.
See Installation section in Online Documentation for full details.

-=-==================================================================-=-
PC1L0Z6T:~ # which ed
which: no ed in (/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/root/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/lib/mit/sbin)
PC1L0Z6T:~ # zypper install ed
Warning: No repositories defined. Operating only with the installed resolvables. Nothing can be installed.

I will try the info above on the OpenSUSE WSL distro

I made the change to ces.ini, but there is no restartboth.sh in the directory  /var/microfocuslicensing/bin/

Hello canthonyparkinson,

For further investigation of this licensing issue, could you create a Support Case? Please mention my name, Blair McDonald, in the detailed description, so that the case will be assigned to me.

Thanks,