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Windows

The toolkit runs on Windows through WSL2. This page is the parts that are genuinely different, not a second copy of the documentation.

Use WSL2, and keep files inside it

Install Docker Desktop with the WSL2 backend, then clone into the Linux filesystem:

cd ~                                  # /home/you, NOT /mnt/c/...
git clone https://github.com/simtabi/multidb-server-docker.git

This is the single most important thing on this page. A repository under /mnt/c/ is reached through a filesystem translation layer, and database workloads are exactly the pattern it handles worst: builds take several times longer, and file permissions do not behave, which breaks the secret files (chmod 0600 silently does nothing meaningful on a DrvFs mount).

Symptoms of getting this wrong: everything is slow, and make init produces secrets the engines then refuse to read.

Line endings

Git on Windows converts LF to CRLF by default. A shell script with CRLF endings fails inside a Linux container with a message that names neither the file nor the cause — usually bad interpreter: /usr/bin/env bash^M: no such file.

The repository ships .gitattributes and .editorconfig that prevent this. If you cloned before that, or through a tool that ignores them:

git config core.autocrlf false
git rm --cached -r . && git reset --hard

Give Docker enough memory

Docker Desktop's WSL2 backend takes what Windows gives it, which is often less than a database wants. Create %UserProfile%\.wslconfig:

[wsl2]
memory=8GB
processors=4

Then wsl --shutdown and start Docker Desktop again.

8 GB is the number if you intend to run Cassandra, which alone wants about 2 GB. For PostgreSQL and MySQL, 4 GB is fine.

Connecting from Windows

Nothing is published by default (MDB_PUBLISH=none), which is usually what you want — but a Windows-side GUI cannot join the Docker network, so set MDB_PUBLISH=direct and connect to localhost:54000 for PostgreSQL (MDB_PORT_BASE + 0).

Ports published to 127.0.0.1 inside WSL2 are reachable from Windows at localhost, so DBeaver, DataGrip, TablePlus and pgAdmin on the Windows side need no configuration beyond the port.

If that stops working after a reboot, it is usually Docker Desktop starting before WSL2 is ready. Restart Docker Desktop.

Git Bash and PowerShell

make and the scripts here need a real bash. Git Bash is close but not close enough — it lacks the process substitution and the docker socket behaviour several scripts rely on. Run everything from a WSL2 shell.

There is no PowerShell path, and adding one is not planned: it would be a second implementation of every script, drifting from the first.

Performance expectations

Inside WSL2, on the Linux filesystem, performance is close to native Linux. If yours is not, check in this order:

  1. the repository is not under /mnt/c/
  2. .wslconfig gives WSL2 enough memory
  3. Windows Defender is not scanning the WSL2 virtual disk — exclude %LocalAppData%\Docker\wsl and your distribution's ext4.vhdx

That third one is frequently the whole problem.

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