Installing Windows Subsystem for Linux and ServiceNow CLI

For years developers have longed for a Linux shell on Windows and today Microsoft has answered the call. WSL allows you to run Linux on Windows without running a resource intensive hypervisor! So for fun lets load it up and install the new ServiceNow CLI.

Installing WSL2 on Windows 10

Reference https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

Run the following Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) commands in PowerShell As Administrator

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

Now reboot Windows.

Configure WSL to use version 2, run in PowerShell As Administrator

wsl --set-default-version 2

In the same PowerShell window, download the latest release of Ubuntu

curl.exe -L -o c:\temp\wslubuntu2004.appx https://aka.ms/wslubuntu2004
Add-AppxPackage c:\temp\wslubuntu2004.appx

At this point you have to go the Start menu, search for Ubuntu and open the new “App”. This will launch a shell window, ask you to set a username/pasword for your new ubuntu instance. That’s it, you now have true a Linux shell in Windows!

Installing Service Now CLI

Now that we have an Ubuntu environment we can install ServiceNow CLI https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-application-development/page/build/servicenow-cli/task/download-cli.html#download-cli

Head to the ServiceNow Store and look for ServiceNow CLI. You will download a “ServiceNow CLI.zip” file. Copy this to C:\Temp https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/9085854adbb52810122156a8dc961910

In the Linux instance run the commands below.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install unzip
cp /mnt/c/Temp/ServiceNow\ CLI.zip .
unzip ServiceNow\ CLI.zip
cd ServiceNow\ CLI/
./snc-1.1.0-linux-x64-installer.run

The guided setup will coach you through the rest of the process. Once complete you need to configure a json file under ~/.snc/config.json

Finally, you can generate a new incident with this 1 liner

snc record create --table incident --data "{short_description: 'New Incident'}"

Confusion with Now CLI aka Vercel

There is also “Now CLI” which is node js instance for ServiceNow Development purposes. This has been deprecated in favour of “vercel”. I recommend Jace Bensons’s blog for an example use case.