After installation, i put a password and it did not work. It gave me an error of "failed to fetch" not sure what to do next.
7 replies
Chris wrote:
Good news — that message isn't your password being rejected. "Failed to fetch" is the browser telling you it lost contact with the box for a second, so it never got an answer back. Nothing's broken, and you're not locked out. Try this first: reload the page. If it now just asks you to enter a password (instead of showing the first-time setup screen), then your password did save — log in with the one you typed. If it still shows the setup screen, run this on the box and paste back what it says: sudo sparkbox doctor That tells us whether the dashboard is actually running, and we'll go from there.
Zypherdose wrote:
i just realized that opening the sparkbox.exe app on my windows10 desktop does not actually turn on the wsl of sparkbox. I have to manually turn it on using powershell then it will work. Why is that? Also this is why i was getting the error before
Chris wrote:
That's a great catch, and you've understood it correctly. The "SparkBox" icon on your desktop is just a shortcut that opens the dashboard in a browser window — it doesn't power on the Linux machine underneath. Normally the machine is started for you automatically by the "Start SparkBox automatically when this PC turns on" option from setup, which keeps it running in the background. It sounds like that didn't get set up, so the box only comes on when you start it yourself in PowerShell — which is exactly why you saw "failed to fetch" before. To fix it: run the SparkBox Setup file again (it's safe to re-run and picks up where it left off) and keep "Start SparkBox automatically when this PC turns on" ticked. Until then your manual PowerShell start works fine.
Zypherdose wrote:
sparkbox wsl only runs if i enable it manually, and the moment i close powershell it stops. How can i make it run in the background and doesnt stop. I already have done your recommendation of "Start SparkBox automatically when this PC turns on"
Chris wrote:
What you're seeing is normal WSL behaviour: the Linux machine shuts itself down about a minute after the last window holding it open closes, so starting it from PowerShell ties its life to that window. The 'Start SparkBox automatically when this PC turns on' option exists precisely to fix this — it registers a background Windows task that holds the machine open with no window needed. Because yours still stops when you close PowerShell, that task hasn't taken hold. Re-run the SparkBox Setup file (it's safe and resumes where it left off), keep that start-with-Windows box ticked, and let it run to the end. Until it's sorted, you can hold it open by hand with: wsl -d SparkBox --exec sleep infinity
Zypherdose wrote:
tried that and it did not work it still closes after closing powershell. and i even tried changing wsl config [boot] command = "nohup sleep infinity /dev/null 2&1 &" did not work too
Chris wrote:
You've done everything right, and I'm sorry this is still fighting you — it shouldn't be this fiddly. The "Start with Windows" option works by creating a hidden Windows task (named SparkBox) that keeps the box running with no window at all — the one reliable way to keep it alive, because WSL shuts itself down about a minute after its last window closes, so your PowerShell and config edits can't hold it open on their own. Let's check whether that task actually got created: open PowerShell, run Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName SparkBox, and paste back what it prints (does it list a task, and what State does it show?). I've flagged this to Tom so he can look at why it isn't taking hold.