Install Ubuntu instance in WSL

There is already one when you enable WSL, but I’d like to install it on
different drives, and not need to worry about messing it up, so I discovered
a WSL Management tool LxRunOffline

(Updated 2020/06/26: Found a note I wrote back in Sep 2019 when I was trying
to install WSL in a new laptop, so added a troubleshoot section below. Also
added a section for upgrading to WSL2)

Download and install

  1. follow the quick start here
    to download the Ubuntu for MS image, then install it with 

    1
    LxRunOffline i -n Ubuntu -d F:\WSL\Ubuntu -f <path_to_ubuntu_image> -s

  2. To start ubuntu, run

    1
    LxRunOffline run bash -n Ubuntu

    Or you can create a shortcut as well

    1
    LxRunOffline s -n Ubuntu -f F:\Ubuntu.lnk

    Or use wsl command

    1
    wsl -d Ubuntu

    You can also set default wsl version so that you only need to type wsl

    1
    2
    wsl --set-default Ubuntu
    wsl

    You should be login as root

  3. Create User, similar to what we do in Arch Linux install, we need to create
    a user with ability to sudo without password

    1. run visudo and add a new user group

      1
      %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

    2. create user: useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash user1

  4. run id user1 to get UID, and run LxRunOffline su <number> -n Ubuntu,
    so next time you will be login as user1 on launch.

  5. configure WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS,
    I set to 5 so that it won’t append %PATH% from Windows

    • LxRunOffline se 5 -n Ubuntu

Package Manager

This time I’d like to try Linuxbrew
for installing packages for developer works (like nodejs).
For system packages I’ll try to stick with apt. This way it should be
safer to do upgrades for my work environment.

I chose Linuxbrew mainly because my current work laptop is Mac, so it is more
consistent for me to switch between work laptop and my Windows PC.

The other reason is that apt prefers stable over latest version, so it might be
difficult to get what I need for work.

  1. Following their guide to do
    sudo sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Linuxbrew/install/master/install.sh",
    I get “Don’t run this as Root!” error, but without sudo it won’t
    have permission to create or write to /home/linuxbrew/ when not using root.

  2. Solution: create that folder beforehand and set owner to user1

    1
    2
    3
    cd /home/
    sudo mkdir linuxbrew
    sudo chown -R user1 linuxbrew/

    Then you should be able to run the script without sudo

  3. The output message contains suggestion on following installation steps:

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    - Install the Linuxbrew dependencies if you have sudo access:
      Debian, Ubuntu, etc.
        sudo apt-get install build-essential
      Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, etc.
        sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'
      See http://linuxbrew.sh/#dependencies for more information.
    - Add Linuxbrew to your ~/.profile by running
        echo 'eval $(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)' >>~/.profile
    - Add Linuxbrew to your PATH
        PATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:$PATH"
    - We recommend that you install GCC by running:
        brew install gcc
    - After modifying your shell profile, you may need to restart your session
      (logout and then log back in) if the brew command isn't found.
    - Run `brew help` to get started
    - Further documentation:
        https://docs.brew.sh
    Warning: /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin is not in your PATH.

    So we do

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install build-essential
    # This one is optional, can also edit $PATH from wsl, see step 4
    echo 'eval $(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)' >>~/.profile
    brew install gcc

  4. (Only required if you skipped echo ‘eval… command above)
    Prepend /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin into $PATH:

    • LxRunOffline has option to set default environment variables but I’m not
      sure how to edit multiple lines.
    • So I open regedit and go to
      Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss\<Distro ID>
      and edit DefaultEnvironment to
      1
      2
      3
      4
      HOSTTYPE=x86_64
      LANG=en_US.UTF-8
      PATH=/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games
      TERM=xterm-256color

  5. now you should be able to install packages, like brew install git

Set timezone

1
sudo apt-get install tzdata

Then follow the instruction to set timezone

To update timezone:

1
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

Backup instance configs

  1. export registry at
    Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss\<Distro ID>,
    you could check DistributionName and find out which one is the correct ID.

  2. LxRunOffline has export config option, but I haven’t tried importing it back
    yet: LxRunOffline ec -n Ubunto -f Ubuntu.xml

Probably don’t need to bother with running GUI app anymore

The color issue on WSL console is resolved in October update (1809) and ConPTY support is available on VS Code insiders build,
the best workflow on Windows (for me at least) now is use VS Code on Windows,
and launch Ubuntu terminals inside VS Code Terminal emulator.

Just change your settings.json to the following:

1
2
3
4
5
{
  "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "F:\\wsl\\LxRunOffline\\LxRunOffline.exe",
  "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": ["run", "bash", "-n", "Ubuntu"],
  "terminal.integrated.windowsEnableConpty": true
}

Previously with Winpty, red bg will be rendered as yellow, and a lot of
black text get rendered as white, as below:

Terminal with Winpty

Now with Conpty:

Terminal with Conpty

Not too bad right? The font rendering is much better with Conpty as well.

Troubleshoot

visudo command not found

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1103038/cant-run-visudo-within-docker-sudoers-file-does-not-exist

visudo: no editor found (editor path = /usr/bin/editor)

1
apt install vim

useradd: group ‘wheel’ does not exist

1
addgroup wheel

/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/brew.sh: line 4: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8): No such file or directory

https://askubuntu.com/questions/114759/warning-setlocale-lc-all-cannot-change-locale

1
2
3
4
sudo apt install -y locales
sudo vim /etc/locale.gen
# uncomment en_us.UTF-8 UTF-8 in locale.gen, then save
sudo locale-gen

Upgrade to WSL 2

(2020/06/26) Note that if your project is put on Windows file system and
shared to WSL distro, currently changing files from Windows won’t trigger
file change notifications on Linux side
(see https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4739). A workaround
would be move all files into WSL file system, and access them
from Windows (see below for instructions)

  1. Download amnd install WSL 2 Kernel from
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-kernel

  2. Enable the ‘Virtual Machine Platform’ optional component

  3. 1
    wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2

Prefer setting default wsl version to 2 after this

1
wsl --set-default-version 2

Access WSL filesystem from Windows

It is not recommend to edit files in WSL directly from Windows by opening files
from C drive (or the drive you installed the WSL). I recall that resulted
messing up file permissions when I tried that for WSL 1 distro. It’s also not
possible for WSL 2 distro since the entire disk is stored as a virtual disk
file. However, you can safely access WSL disks by navigating to \\wsl$\ in
file explorer.

(source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/04/access-wsl-files-windows-explorer)

Comments

▲