Running hello_world on Windows

[ahenshaw]

Any issues with networking on Windows? Your hello_world runs fine on Linux, but on Windows, I'm getting the error: "The requested address is not valid in its context." even when running with admin privileges. This happens during the participant builder stage. IntraProcess doesn't error (as expected), but I need Multicast. I've run plenty of other code where I'm communicating on this same box via Multicast.

[hdds-team]

Thanks for the detailed report!

This is a known Windows multicast binding difference — Linux lets you bind directly to the multicast group address, Windows doesn't and expects binding to INADDR_ANY (0.0.0.0) or the local interface address, then joining the multicast group separately.

Quick workaround — force the interface explicitly (replace with your actual LAN IP):

set HDDS_MULTICAST_IF=192.168.1.100
set HDDS_UNICAST_IF=192.168.1.100
set RUST_LOG=hdds=debug
hello_world.exe

The RUST_LOG=hdds=debug will show exactly which interfaces are detected and where the binding fails — that'll help narrow it down.

If that doesn't help, could you share:

• Windows version
• Number of network interfaces (ipconfig /all output)
• Are you running Hyper-V, a VPN, or WSL? (Hyper-V creates virtual vEthernet adapters that don't support multicast and are often picked up as the default interface)

I'll open an issue to track the proper Windows multicast fix.

[ahenshaw]

The environment variable work-around was successful!

[hdds-team]

Thanks for confirming! I'll add Windows multicast binding notes to the docs.