Linkerd2: linkerd dashboard does not work on Windows Subsystem for Linux

[skalinets]

Bug Report

What is the issue?

linkerd dashboard does not work on Windows Subsystem for Linux.

How can it be reproduced?

Follow getting started steps on WSL shell.
Step 4 doesn't work.

Logs, error output, etc

Failed to open Linkerd URL http://127.0.0.1:64538/api/v1/namespaces/linkerd/services/linkerd-web:http/proxy/
in the default browser: exec: "xdg-open": executable file not found in $PATH%

linkerd check output

kubernetes-api: can initialize the client..................................[ok]
kubernetes-api: can query the Kubernetes API...............................[ok]
kubernetes-api: is running the minimum Kubernetes API version..............[ok]
linkerd-api: control plane namespace exists................................[ok]
linkerd-api: control plane pods are ready..................................[ok]
linkerd-api: can initialize the client.....................................[ok]
linkerd-api: can query the control plane API...............................[ok]
linkerd-api[kubernetes]: control plane can talk to Kubernetes..............[ok]
linkerd-api[prometheus]: control plane can talk to Prometheus..............[ok]
linkerd-api: no invalid service profiles...................................[ok]
linkerd-version: can determine the latest version..........................[ok]
linkerd-version: cli is up-to-date.........................................[ok]
linkerd-version: control plane is up-to-date...............................[ok]

Environment

• Kubernetes Version: 1.10.3
• Cluster Environment: Docker for Desktop Edge
• Host OS: Windows 10
• Linkerd version: stable-2.1.0

Possible solution

Few options:

• Maybe detect that Windows and use cmd.exe instead of xdg-open
• Or don't fail when xdg-open fails, so user would be able to manually start browser and paste there URLs.

The latter seems to be easier.

Additional context

I wrote a blog post with a workaround.

[grampelberg]

@siggy you mentioned something about this yesterday? Do we need a fix from the upstream library?

[siggy]

Looks like a known issue in pkg/browser:
https://github.com/pkg/browser/issues/6
https://github.com/pkg/browser/pull/8

I think we have a few options. Recommend in descending order:

1. @skalinets's recommendation to not fail when xdg-open fails. Just show the URLs.
2. Special handling of WSL in Linkerd cli.
3. Patch pkg/browser (stalled at https://github.com/pkg/browser/pull/8)

[grampelberg]

I'm a +1 on option #1. The behavior is definitely weird right now (command doesn't really fail, but the proxy isn't running either).