Chirpy eventually worked, but I gave and switched to the much simpler Just the Docs.

This is just a log of what happened.

Failed Docker attempts

I worked from https://chirpy.cotes.page/posts/getting-started/.

After installing Docker Desktop, I clicked “Skip” on the offer of signing in.

In https://chirpy.cotes.page/posts/getting-started/#using-dev-containers-recommended-for-windows, I accidentally did an ordinary git clone, and, to see if I could get back on track, I clicked the “Reopen in Container” button in the VS Code “Folder contains a Dev Container configuration file” popup. Unfortunately, it failed after a few minutes with “An error occurred setting up the container”. I spotted this error message in the logs:

docker: Error response from daemon: accessing specified distro mount service: stat /run/guest-services/distro-services/ ubuntu-22-04.sock: no such file or directory

I am giving up and following the Chirpy instructions properly.

  • Quit VS Code
  • Remove my chirpy clone
  • Start VS Code and run Dev Containers: Clone Repository in Container Volume… from the Command Palette (F1).
  • Enter https://github.com/dominicprior/my-chirpy

This did lots of docker-ish stuff before failing with “An error occurred setting up the container”.

WSL (first attempt)

I am giving up again and seeing if going via wsl helps.

  • wsl –distribution Ubuntu-24.04
  • docker –version

Oops! I am not sure how to “open it in a container via VS Code” because presumably it means a native Linux VS Code. Maybe I need to install a full Linux somewhere.

Now trying https://chirpy.cotes.page/posts/getting-started/#setting-up-natively-recommended-for-unix-like-os but inside WSL and without thinking about VS Code yet.

  • git clone https://github.com/dominicprior/my-chirpy
  • wsl –distribution Ubuntu-24.04
  • sudo apt-get install ruby-full
  • bundle # error while trying to write to /var/lib/gems/3.2.0/cache

Oops! It said “Don’t run Bundler as root. Installing your bundle as root will break this application for all non-root users on this machine.”.

It also said “You have to install development tools first”.

WSL

According to Claude, Jekyll and Ruby are primarily designed for Unix, while WSL2, on the other hand, is “remarkably faithful”. So I am going to reinstall my WSL Ubuntu distro (in case I messed it up earlier) and start again.

Claude also pointed out the WSL files are visible in Windows Explorer.

  • wsl –unregister Ubuntu-22.04
  • wsl –unregister Ubuntu-24.04
  • wsl –unregister docker-desktop
  • wsl -l –online
  • wsl –install -d Ubuntu-24.04

Installing Ruby

I am working from https://jekyllrb.com/docs/installation/ubuntu/.

  • sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev

It said “Unable to locate package ruby-full”. Therefore:

  • sudo apt update
  • sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev

Then:

  • echo ‘# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems’ » ~/.bashrc
  • echo ‘export GEM_HOME=”$HOME/gems”’ » ~/.bashrc
  • echo ‘export PATH=”$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH”’ » ~/.bashrc
  • source ~/.bashrc

and:

  • gem install jekyll bundler

Installing Chirpy

  • mkdir git
  • cd git
  • git clone https://github.com/dominicprior/my-chirpy
  • bundle
  • bundle exec jekyll serve

Wow, it ran! And produced a webpage at http://127.0.0.1:4000/ in a fraction of a second.

  • code \wsl.localhost\Ubuntu-24.04\home\dominic\git\my-chirpy

Seeing the underlying Gem

  • bundle info –path jekyll-theme-chirpy ==> /home/dominic/gems/gems/jekyll-theme-chirpy-7.4.1

GitHub access

When I tried a git push from a WSL bash prompt, I got “Password authentication is not supported for Git operations” due to GitHub 2FA etc.

So, instead, I had to make an access token. For extra security, I chose to make a fine-grained access token, using these instructions, which started by clicking on my GitHub settings.

Part of the way through the instructions, it asked for a passkey (I think) which I gave simply by clicking on some google authentication button (if I remember rightly).

I chose the one repo, my-chirpy, and the one permission, contents with read and write. Then I was able to use the personal access token instead of a password.