WSL2 Basics

Introduction

This Post will go over some of my basic findings about WSL2 as I have noticed that documentation appears to be sparse.

How to install and configure WSL2

Open Control Panel
Select Programs
Select Turn Windows Features on or off
Select Windows Subsystem for Linux
Select OK
Open Windows Store
Search for your chosen Distro of choice
Install said chosen Distro
Launch the app you just installed
Follow onscreen prompts

General Inquiries

Will restarting WSL2 restart the Host?

It appears that the restart or shutdown commands do not function in a WSL2 environment

Do GUI apps run on WSL2 actually work?

The short answer is yes but you appear to need to install an entire DE (Desktop Enviroment) and access it through either VNC or RDP depending on the Distro. At the time of writing this about the easiest WSL2 image to get a working DE on is Kali you can a guide at kali.org.

Disclaimer: I could not get this working. I suspect it has something to do with me testing this in a VM.

How does the Init System Work

By Default WSL does not “Boot” until the first command is run. Furthermore WSL uses Initd as its init system, which means that you may be missing some functionality that you are used to with the systemd init system

How does WSL2 interact with the firewall

You will receive a Windows Security alert to allow the software to make changes to the firewall

How to Schedule Tasks using WSL2

While by default there is no way to schedule a task in a WSL2 instance I have found the bellow work around

Add the following line to visudo in the WSL instance
1 %sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/service cron start
This allows you to run sudo service cron start without being prompt for a password
In Task Scheduler create a new task to run at boot that runs the following command
1 wsl sudo service cron start
This will run the sudo service cron start command within your WSL instance (This will also start the instance)
Use cron as you normally would

Mounting Drives

To manually mount any drive connected to your Windows subsystem in WSL run the bellow command (replacing the drive letters with the one for the drive you want to boot):

    sudo mount -t drvfs D: /mnt/d

Install Docker on WSL2

Follow the bellow guide on how to install Docker on WSL containers: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2020/03/02/docker-in-wsl2