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WSLKit

This repository contains a toolkit for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

TLDR: Go straight to usage examples for more of a step by step guide.

The main part of the kit is the PowerShell script Wsl.ps1, which is a generic utility script for installing and managing WSL distributions. Two of the main features this provides, are custom installation of distros, which I have called sideloading, and the setup of a third party networking kit, called VPNKit.

WSL2 uses Hyper-V virtualized networking by default, and it has shown to be problematic in combination with VPN and also various antivirus/firewall software. This project facilitates use of an alternative, third party, networking kit, called VPNKit. The core part of the VPNKit comes from the github.com/moby/vpnkit project, and it is adapted to WSL using the method from the github.com/sakai135/wsl-vpnkit project. The way it works is to intercept the ethernet traffic of the WSL2 virtual machine, and redirect it through a dedicated process pipe connection between the virtual machine and the host. More details below.

In addition to the main features mentioned above, this repository also contains some convenience shell scripts that can be executed from within a newly created WSL distributions for quick initial configuration, installation of different predefined sets of software packages etc.

Windows version

This project was initially created to work on Windows 10 version 1909 (build 18363), but I have since upgraded to Windows 10 version 21H2 (build 19044). Not tested with Windows 11.

If you have a different version of Windows you may want to check the release notes for Windows Subsystem for Linux to see if there are new features that affects this solution. E.g. in build 20190 the built-in wsl.exe command gets the ability to install WSL distros with wsl --install command, and in build 20211 it can also list available images with wsl --install --list-distributions. To some degree this will overlap with the New-Distro and Get-DistroImage functions in my PowerShell script, although my variants will still be relevant as they only imports the disk images without fully installing distros as Windows "apps". Also they support not only installation of the official WSL distributions, but also raw disk images, which some official linux releases provides, e.g. the Arch Linux bootstrap distribution and the Alpine minimal root filesystem.

Disclaimers

This project exists primarily to support my own use of WSL.

The source code has not been written with public scrutiny in mind, but has grown out of the previous rationale.

I take no responsibility if anything bad happens if you decide to try it out.

However, I don't expect any problems, and I assume it could be useful also for others, so please: Just try it out. If you come across any issues, or have any suggestions, I would appreciate if you report them in my GitHub project, and I will do my best to make the necessary improvements!

Main features

Before showing example usage, the main features of this project will be described. At the end you will find more details.

WSL Administration

The main PowerShell script provides general WSL administrative functions. Some of them are just convenience functions around standard wsl.exe functionality, but with more PowerShell-like syntax, including tab completion of parameters such as name of installed distribution. Others are accessing registry settings used by the WSL services, not exposed by the standard tools. Example of such functions are changing which WSL distribution is default, changing the default user account, renaming or moving the disk image location of a sideloaded WSL distribution (see next section). See complete Wsl.ps1 function list below.

Sideloading

The PowerShell script supports creating WSL distribution based on the images that Microsoft publishes direct download links to, which currently includes: Ubuntu, Debian, Kali and OpenSUSE. The downloads are appx installers, same as what is used behind the scenes in a Microsoft Store installation. The PowerShell script does not run these installers, but instead extracts the root filesystem archives within them, and imports those using the official wsl.exe command line utility. The few configuration steps that would normally be performed by the appx installer will (when relevant) be performed by the PowerShell script, mainly the optional creation of a default user account to use instead of the built-in root account.

This "sideloading" means an installed WSL distribution will not be managed by Windows as an UWP application, like with the standard Microsoft Store-based installations. You will not be able to uninstall it from the standard Settings app, and you do not (automatically) get a start-menu shortcut for it. Also, the virtual disk file will be stored in a directory of your choosing, instead of the %LocalAppData%\Packages directory used by UWP applications. Still, the installed WSL distributions will by managed by the regular WSL services, and the standard wsl.exe utility etc will treat them completely like if it was installed from an appx installer or from Microsoft Store.

You can install as many WSL distributions as you like, even multiple instances of the same image (e.g. multiple Debian instances), as long as you give them a unique name and disk file location.

The installation method of importing the root filesystem archive, are also used to include support for some additional images. For example the official Alpine "minimal root filesystem" archives are published on alpinelinux.org, and Arch Linux "bootstrap" distributions on archlinux.org. Both of these are supported by the PowerShell script; it will download the latest version, import it into WSL, and do the basic configuration like creation of user etc. like with the officially WSL adapted images. See complete list of supported Linux distributions below.

Edit: Since the above was written, Microsoft has published a short how-to guide covering this same approach: Import any Linux distribution to use with WSL. It mentions importing Alpine "minimal root filesystem", but main example it uses is CentOS by extracting the disk image from a docker container. So this is now an "officially approved" method for installing WSL distros! My PowerShell script automates manual steps described.

VPNKit

The second main functionality of this project and the main PowerShell script is the support for VPNKit. This is a set of tools providing customized, VPN/antivirus/firewall-friendly, network connectivity from a network device in the VM used to host WSL2 distros.

The challenge with the Hyper-V based networking that is default in WSL, is that it can easily be problematic with VPN, and will be entirely blocked by some antivirus/firewall software etc. Read more here.

The mechanism used is to route network traffic from the distro into a virtual network interface in the vm, which is connected to a unix socket. A process in the vm (socat) connects the unix socket via a process pipeline to a process on the host (npiperelay), and this host process connects via a Windows named pipe to a gateway process (vpnkit). This relays the ethernet packages into the actual host network device.

Docker Desktop with WSL2 backend is using much of the same method, the core components used here, including the VPNKit executable, are actually taken from the Docker Desktop toolset. For background information, read the vpnkit documentation Plumbing inside Docker for Windows. The main difference from Docker's approach, is that instead of using Hyper-V sockets between the host and VM, we use more "native" approach with a process pipeline and a Windows named pipe, with help of additional components: The socat utility in the WSL VM, and the npiperelay utility on the Windows host.

The administration and execution of VPNKit is handled by a shell script wsl-vpnkit, which is forked from github.com/sakai135/wsl-vpnkit. That project was also the main inspiration for all the VPNKit related functionality in the current repository. My functionality is based on the original version, where it was simply this shell script and a set of manual tasks to get it running, see the VPNKit manual install section below for details. My Wsl.ps1 script has functions New-VpnKit and Install-VpnKit that does all the needed steps for you. On September 20, 2021, the original sakai135 repository changed to use a separate Alpine distro, and supply a pre-built version for download. The original version, which I'm based on, is kept as release [v0.1.0-20210916.4273cb7] (https://github.com/sakai135/wsl-vpnkit/tree/v0.1.0-20210916.4273cb7).

The wsl-vpnkit documentation was initially written with the assumption that you have network connectivity using the default WSL networking, but needed the customized networking to be able to use a VPN connection from the host. The shell script assumes you have installed the socat utility in the distribution, but if your case is that you have no network connectivity at all from within your WSL distributions, then how do you do that? What you can do is to download the package archive files on your host computer, and install them from file in the WSL distribution using its package tool in "offline-mode". The Install-VpnKit function of my Wsl.ps1 does this for you. See the VPNKit manual install section below for details.

Docker

If you have Docker Desktop installed, it will include its own copy of the same vpnkit tool (com.docker.vpnkit.exe, previously vpnkit.exe) used by the wsl-vpnkit system. Upon start/stop it will terminate any running processes with same name, which means it would also terminate such a process started by wsl-vpnkit, and it would have to be restarted it to get it to work again. The workaround for this, as in the original github.com/sakai135/wsl-vpnkit, is to rename the copy used for WSL into wsl-vpnkit.exe. This is automatically done by the installation performed by the Wsl.ps1, functions New-VpnKit and Install-VpnKit.

Linux distributions

Currently supported linux distributions (and tested versions):

  • Ubuntu (tested version 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa")
  • Debian (tested with version 10 "Buster", originally created when the distro download was version 9 "Stretch", and then tested that with upgrade to version 10 "Buster" and also version 11 "Bullseye")
  • Kali (untested)
  • OpenSUSE (untested)
  • Alpine (tested version 3.13.1)
  • Arch (tested version 2021.02.01)
  • Fedora (tested release versions 34, 35, 36 and development versions 37 and 38 (current Rawhide), both standard and minimal base images. Note that Fedora 35 does not mount /mnt/c properly, which also means Install-VpnKit will not work out of the box.
  • Rocky Linux (Install-VpnKit not supported yet, does not mount /mnt/c without first installing package util-linux, or util-linux-core)
  • Void Linux (tested version 20221001)
  • Clear Linux OS (Install-VpnKit not supported yet)

Note that the Alpine, Arch, Fedora, Void, Clear and Rocky distributions listed above are not regular WSL images. Alpine, Arch and Void are official root filesystem distributions (Alpine calls it "minimal root filesystem", Arch calls it "bootstrap", Void calls it "rootfs tarball"). Fedora, Clear and Rocky are similar root filesystem packages, but taken from the official Docker container images, which may have some additional customizations. Not all of them have been properly tested in a WSL setup, and may therefore lack something, typically not automatically mounting the host drives (e.g. /mnt/c). Alpine and Arch are the most safe choices of them, in addition to the more official WSL distros in the above list, where Ubuntu and Debian are the ones I've tested most.

Note also that not all distributions listed above support the full VPNKit installation, as done by function Install-VpnKit, and described above. This function assumes the distro have no network connection, and must download any packages required by the VPNKit setup on the host and install in distro from file. This must be implemented for each specific distro, at least for specific distro built-in package managers, and this is something I might not yet have done even though I've added basic support for downloading and installing the distro. What you can do is to install a base distro known to work with VPNKit, which includes Alpine, Arch, Ubuntu and Debian, and install the full VPNKit setup in this. Then, if you want to use a different distro, such as Rocky Linux, you can just do some simple DNS configuration for it to be able to have network access through the VPNKit setup running in the other running distro. See Creating additional distribution for more details.

Linux configuration

The created Linux installations are intentionally left in a clean state after creation. If you specified a user name then this user will be created, and added to a image-specific default set of groups (including the sudo group for distributions that includes the sudo utility by default). When installing the VPNKit, it will install the software package socat, which is required by this utility, and copy in some wsl-vpnkit scripts into /usr/local/bin. The images from Microsoft's WSL downloads may have some small additional configurations included, such as regional settings, package repository configurations etc, but usually not much more.

To get a more functional system up and running quickly, this project also includes some additional shell scripts specialized for some of the supported images. Some are for initial setup, others are for more specific workflows such as installing a full development environment with Python and GCC.

The Debian Linux image currently published on Microsoft is quite old, currently still on Debian 9 (stretch), so you will probably want to upgrade it to at least Debian 10 (buster), which is the currently "stable" version of Debian. The Debian Linux image currently published on Microsoft is Debian 10 (buster), which is the currently "stable" version of Debian. When Debian 11 moves to stable, you can use the included shell script debian-upgrade to do the upgrade. This script can be used for regular package updates as well as major release upgrades. Read the comments in the script header for more details. To upgrade to latest stable version of Debian, just run the script without arguments: /mnt/c/Wsl/debian-upgrade. See also example below.

The Alpine, Arch, Fedora, Void, Clear and Rocky images are not WSL images, but official plain root filsystem image distributions. These will always be installed from the latest released version, but will generally have less initial configuration than the WSL images. This is mostly true for the Arch Linux image, where there are quite a few steps that needs to be performed before being able to start using pacman to install additional software. The supplied script arch-setup will perform the required steps for you (read the comments for description of what it does), just run the script without arguments: /mnt/c/Wsl/arch-setup. See also example below. Other images, such as Alpine, Void, Clear and Rocky, require little or no initial configuration before being taken into regular use.

In addition to the mentioned Arch Linux setup script, there are also some additional convenience scripts for typical, but not necessarily required, set-up tasks. Such as for upgrading Debian and Fedora to latest version, or to install bash and some other relevant core tools. See below.

For Arch there are also some even higher level setup scripts, which can be used to quickly set up a development environment. The script arch-install-dev-cpp-python-qt can be executed after arch-setup to install a set of packages relevant for a specific C++, Python and Qt development environment, including: Git (with LFS), SSL, SSH, GCC, CMake, Ninja, Qt5, Python (with numpy, pylint, pytest, pyside2 and ipython). Alternatively, the script arch-install-dev-go can be to install a set of packages relevant for a different development environment, namely Go (golang), including gcc to be able to compile cgo-based packages. It does not install additional Go related support tools (such as delve, guru, goimports), since not all are available as pacman packages, and also they can easily be installed from VSCode when using WSL remoting, or with "go get" command.

The script ssh-init is a script for initializing SSH agent for a shell session. It starts an ssh-agent process, if not already running, and adds all identities found for current user that are not already loaded. Its purpose is for use with git and multiple identities, but it is not only to avoid having to execute ssh-add once for each identity, but also to be able to re-run it at will for ensuring agent is running and identities are loaded without having to re-enter password each time also for keys that were already loaded. Note that this script must be sourced into your current session: . /mnt/c/Wsl/ssh-init.

See example usage below.

Usage examples

First time install, and creating your first WSL distribution with VPNKit

  1. Clone this repo (or download the files manually) into a directory of choice, e.g. C:\Wsl.

  2. Start PowerShell and dot source the main PowerShell script into the session:

cd C:\Wsl
. \Wsl.ps1
  1. Initiate a subdirectory with VPNKit utilities (skip if you don't need the optional VPNKit networking):
New-VpnKit -Destination .\VPNKit
  1. Create your primary WSL distribution, e.g. using Debian image, with specified name ("Primary"), disk image file stored in specified subdirectory, and create user ("me") to use as default instead of the built-in root:
New-Distro -Name Primary -Destination .\Distributions\Primary -Image debian-gnulinux -UserName me
  1. Install VPNKit utility into the created distribution (skip if you don't need the optional VPNKit networking):
Install-VpnKit -Name Primary -ProgramDirectory .\VPNKit

Using a WSL distribution with VPNKit

Assuming you have created a WSL distribution with the optional VPNKit networking as described above.

  1. Start VPNKit services previously installed on the primary distribution.
Start-VpnKit
  1. Open a shell session to the primary distribution. The following is the same as running wsl.exe, and it will start a shell session in your current console window. You can add parameter NewWindow to start the session as a new console Windows instead.
Start-Distro

Alternative:

  1. Start VPNKit services and open shell session to same distro with a single command:
Start-Distro -WithVpnKit

Setting up the WSL distribution

Depending on the image installed, there are usually some basic steps that you want to perform after the initial distro install. Some can be quickly done by running shell scripts included in this project. Run them from within the WSL, but you can easily just refer to them through the automatic mount back to host.

Debian

When distro image was still Debian 9 (stretch), but latest stable version was Debian 10 (buster), the following script would perform the upgrade. Note that the script (without arguments) will upgrade to latest stable, but if this is more than one major version step up then you should upgrade one version at a time. See script comments for details.

/mnt/c/Wsl/debian-upgrade

Arch

Configure locale, sudo and pacman, perform full upgrade of all installed packages, install some very basic tools (such as sudo, sed, tar, nano, some of which required by the script itself), and configure bash.

/mnt/c/Wsl/arch-setup

Fedora

Configure locale, perform full upgrade of all installed packages, and install some very basic tools (such as wget, nano, unzip, findutils), and configure bash.

/mnt/c/Wsl/fedora-setup

Perform upgrade to latest version. If no new major release then performs a normal package upgrade. If there is a new major release it performs a full system upgrade to the new release. If there is more than one major version step up you should upgrade one version at a time, by specifying target version as argument. See script comments for details.

/mnt/c/Wsl/fedora-upgrade

Creating additional distribution

You can install as many WSL distributions as you want, just make sure to give them a unique name and a separate directory for the disk image file.

If you are using the VPNKit networking, you only need the full installation on one distro, since (in WSL2) all distros run in a single shared virtual machine. Any additional distros can make use of the same networking by just pointing the nameserver configuration to it.

  1. Create additional WSL distribution, this time with the Ubuntu 20.04 image.
New-Distro -Name Ubuntu -Destination C:\Dev\VirtualMachines\WSL\Distributions\Ubuntu -Release ubuntu2004 -UserName aon -SevenZip C:\Dev\Tools\7-Zip\7z.exe
  1. Alternative 1: Install minimal VPNKit configuration needed to be able to use the VPNKit utility running from the primary distribution (skip if you don't need the optional VPNKit networking):
Install-VpnKit -Name Ubuntu -ProgramDirectory .\VPNKit -ConfigurationOnly
  1. Alternative 2: You can easily do the same manually by simply configuring the distro to use the VPNKit nameserver address 192.168.67.1 (skip if you don't need the optional VPNKit networking):
    • Add the line nameserver 192.168.67.1 at the top of file /etc/resolv.conf (you can normally just remove existing content as the default in WSL is to generates it automatically, see next step).
    • Add the line generateResolvConf = false below a line [network] in file /etc/wsl.conf (to prevent WSL from overwriting the resolv.conf changes in previous step).
    • Alternatively, if you ran the New-VpnKit command you will have ready to use resolv.conf and wsl.conf in the specified ProgramDirectory, which you can copy into /etc/ of your distro instead (unless you have existing configuration in wsl.conf you want to keep).
    • Note that after doing these changes you must shutdown WSL immediately with command wsl.exe --shutdown to be sure that the changes are picked up, and your resolv.conf not overwritten.
    • Read more in the VPNKit manual configuration section below.

Uninstalling

Use function Unintall-VpnKit to undo the VPNKit related configuration and remove the program files installed into /usr/local/bin of a specified WSL distribution. If you performed the manal nameserver-configuration for additional distributions as described above, just change back generateResolvConf = true in file /etc/wsl.conf.

Use function Remove-Distro to unregister a distribution from WSL and delete its disk image.

To uninstall the VPNKit program files installed on on host with New-VpnKit, just delete the specified destination folder.

Details

More details. In general, you must look into the different scripts to learn everything about what they do. Reading the comment headers is a good start, but you may have to dive into the source code as well.

Wsl.ps1

The PowerShell script Wsl.ps1 is a utility script intended to be dot sourced into a PowerShell session, to expose its functionality for interactive use.

Parts of the functionality is based on GitHub API. It is open for anonymous access, but will then impose heavy rate limiting. This can be avoided by authenticating with a Personal Access Token. So if you have a GitHub account, then generate a token at https://github.com/settings/tokens/new (no special permissions needed), and supply you username and token (instead of password) when dot sourcing the Wsl.ps1 script:

. Wsl.ps1 -GitHubCredential (Get-Credential)

Wsl.ps1 functions

  • New-Distro
    • Downloads a specified distro image, specified with parameter -Image (see Get-DistroImage), extracts the file system archive from it and imports it into WSL by executing wsl.exe --import.
    • Optionally creates a user account within the distro to use as default instead of the built-in root account (parameter -User). Alternatively you can always choose to create a user manually later from within the distro, and use Set-DistroDefaultUserId to set it as default user for wsl to use.
  • Start-Distro
    • Basically just executes wsl.exe to enter an interactive shell session, but with options such as distro name (with autocompletion), starting in new console window instead of current, etc.
    • Parameter -WithVpnKit also starts VPNKit service from the same distro in a separate window, avoid having to execute Start-VpnKit separately. You can do the same from a regular Windows shortcut without having to use the PowerShell script with a command such as this: 
      C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "start ""VPNKit"" C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe --user root /usr/local/bin/wsl-vpnkit && start """" C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe ~"
  • Stop-Distro
    • Basically just executes wsl.exe --terminate.
    • Parameter -All will call Stop-Wsl, which executes wsl.exe --shutdown.
  • Rename-Distro
    • Renames the distro, by updating the DistributionName value in registry.
    • Checks that the distro is not UWP app installed first.
  • Move-Distro
    • Moves the distro disk image, by looking up the current value of BasePath in registry, moving the directory pointed to, and then updating the registry entry accordingly.
    • Checks that the distro is not UWP app installed first.
  • Remove-Distro
    • Basically just executes wsl.exe --unregister.
    • This will permanently delete the distro's disk image.
  • New-VpnKit
    • Downloads necessary third party utilities for the VPNKit networking toolkit, and generates scripts and configuration files that can later be used with Install-VpnKit.
    • Result is a program directory on host.
    • You should keep this around for later use with Install-VpnKit, and also after that since the wsl-vpnkit script contains a reference back to this directory. If you want to move it, you should instead delete and recreate it in the new location, and then also execute Install-VpnKit again on any distros you did this on with the old location. You can avoid this by manually updating VPNKIT_PATH variable in the wsl-vpnkit script, or by overriding VPNKIT_PATH when executing wsl-vpnkit as described in VPNKit manual install section. This does not apply to Install-VpnKit with -ConfigurationOnly, then it will not have reference back to the VpnKit directory on host.
  • Intall-VpnKit
    • Install VPNKit toolkit into a WSL distro, by using an existing program directory on host previously prepared with New-VpnKit.
    • Will download necessary packages (socat) and install them from host (assuming no internet connectivity from distro).
    • Will also modify the DNS configuration in the distro, to make it resolve names using host's DNS configuration via the VPNKit services.
    • Parameter -ConfigurationOnly will perform the minimal DNS configuration necessary for a distro to use a VPNKit service running from another (any) distro.
  • Unintall-VpnKit:
    • Revert changes done in a WSL distro by Install-VpnKit.
  • Start-VpnKit
    • Basically just executes wsl.exe --user root /usr/local/bin/wsl-vpnkit, but does so in a new console window (unless parameter -NoNewWindow).
  • Get-Distro
    • Basically just executes wsl.exe --list --quiet, or wsl.exe --list --running --quiet if parameter -Running.
  • Get-DistroImage
    • Returns the list of supported WSL distro images (Linux distributions), which can be used to create WSL distro instances with New-Distro, specified in its parameter -Image.
  • Get-DefaultDistroVersion/Set-DefaultDistroVersion
    • Get/set the default WSL version that new WSL distros will be created with: Value 1 for WSL1, 2 for WSL2.
  • Get-DefaultDistro/Set-DefaultDistro
    • Get/set the name of the installed distro that is currently defined as default in WSL.
  • Get-DistroDistributionName/Set-DistroDistributionName
    • Get/set name of installed distro, accessing the registry (Get-Distro uses wsl.exe).
    • Note: The setter will just update the registry value without any security mechanisms, its generally safer to use Rename-Distro.
  • Get-DistroPackageName
    • Get the name of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, if the distro were installed through one (e.g. from Microsoft Store).
  • Get-DistroPath/Set-DistroPath
    • Get/set the path to a distro's backing files (virtual disk image) on the host system.
    • Note: The setter will just update the registry value without moving the existing disk file, so its generally better to use Move-Distro.
  • Get-DistroDefaultUserId/Set-DistroDefaultUserId
    • Get/set the user id of the default user for a distro.
    • If a user was specified with New-Distro, this will be set as the default.
    • You need to use the internal numeric user identifier from the Linux distro, e.g. with command id -u.
  • Get-DistroFlags/Set-DistroFlags
    • Get/set the flags value of a distro, which is a combination of the options for Interop and AutoMount, also exposed as separate convenience functions.
  • Get-DistroInterop/Set-DistroInterop
    • Get/set the value of the interop option flag.
    • The main option decides whether WSL will support launching Windows processes, with a suboption AppendWindowsPath, which (when main option is enabled) decides whether WSL will add Windows path elements to the $PATH environment variable.
    • The same can be done with Get-DistroFlags/Set-DistroFlags.
  • Get-DistroAutoMount/Set-DistroAutoMount
    • Get/set the value of automount option flag.
    • This option decides whether WSL will automatically mount fixed drives (i.e C:/ or D:/) with DrvFs under /mnt. If not set the drives won't be mounted automatically, but can still be mounted manually or via fstab.
    • The same can be done with Get-DistroFlags/Set-DistroFlags.
  • Get-DistroVersion
    • Get the WSL version of a distro: 1 for WSL1, 2 for WSL2.
  • Get-DistroFileSystemVersion
    • Get the filsystem format version used for a distro.
    • The possible values are 1 for "LxFs" and 2 for "WslFs".
    • This is not the same as the WSL/distro version.
  • Stop-Wsl
    • Executes wsl.exe --shutdown.
    • This will stop stop all running distributions, as well as the entire virtual machine which the distributions run in.

Wsl.ps1 usage tips

The first created distribution in WSL will be treated as the default. When installing a distro with New-Distro you can specify that it should be the new default distribution from now on by adding parameter -SetDefault.

Like with wsl.exe most of the PowerShell functions will run against the default distribution, unless you specify the name of a specific distribution as argument.

To see the complete list of supported distributions use function Get-DistroImage. You will get tab-completion on parameter -Image based on the result from this.

If you want to be extra cautious and wants to confirm steps performed by the various functions, add parameter -Confirm, and if you want to see more detailed output about what is going on, add parameter -Verbose to the function, like you normally do in PowerShell.

If you have 7-Zip already but not in your PATH, to avoid it being temporarily downloaded in the background by the PowerShell script whenever it needs it, specify its path with parameter -SevenZip "path\to\your\7z.exe".

VPNKit manual install

One of the main purposes of the PowerShell script Wsl.ps1 provided by this project, is to automate the steps necessary to install and run VPNKit. The required steps are described in the wsl-vpnkit documentation. The example commands there are for execution from within WSL, which requires you to already have internet access. Here are the same steps described for running them on the host, and with some more detail:

  • Install socat with the WSL distro's package manager. When you do not have internet access from the WSL distro yet, you will have to download the packages on host and install them from local path, as described below.
  • Download the wsl-vpnkit shell script, and copy it into the WSL file system (e.g. /usr/local/bin). From within WSL, you can copy it from a host location via the /mnt/c/ automount, e.g. to copy from C:\bin on host to /usr/local/bin in distro filesystem: 
    cp /mnt/c/bin/wsl-vpnkit /usr/local/bin
  • Download npiperelay, extract npiperelay.exe from the archive download, and copy it to a location reachable to the wsl-vpnkit script.
    • The script references it using variable VPNKIT_NPIPERELAY_PATH, with default value /mnt/c/bin/npiperelay.exe, so putting it in C:\bin on host will make the script work without changes.
    • You can put it in other locations as long as you set the variable before running the script, or modify the script source, e.g. VPNKIT_NPIPERELAY_PATH=/mnt/c/VPNKit/npiperelay.exe wsl-vpnkit.
    • You can choose to keep it within the WSL filesystem instead of the host, if you want a more "self-contained" distro installation, not tied to a fixed location on host.
      • The npiperelay readme warns that this is not possible, but that was most probably written before interop functionality was added to WSL, because as long as the interop setting is not disabled it does really work!
    • If you put it in a location found from $PATH within WSL, e.g. /usr/local/bin, or create a symbolic link in such a location pointing to the real location, it being in WSL or even host's filesystem, you can run the script like this: VPNKIT_NPIPERELAY_PATH=npiperelay.exe wsl-vpnkit.
  • Get the executables com.docker.vpnkit.exe (previously just vpnkit.exe) and vpnkit-tap-vsockd from Docker Desktop.
    • If you do not have Docker Desktop already installed, instead of installing it just to get a hold on these files, you can download the installer and extract it with 7-Zip - first extract the installer exe, and then from the extracted folder extract once more the resources\services.tar (previously resources/wsl/docker-for-wsl.iso) file, and you should find the two executables for easy copy-install. For example, to install them into C:\bin execute something like this from a PowerShell prompt: 
      Start-BitsTransfer "https://desktop.docker.com/win/stable/Docker Desktop Installer.exe"
7z e -y -oC:\bin "Docker Desktop Installer.exe" resources\com.docker.vpnkit.exe resources\services.tar
7z e -y -oC:\bin C:\bin\services.tar containers\services\vpnkit-tap-vsockd\lower\sbin\vpnkit-tap-vsockd
    • Rename the executable com.docker.vpnkit.exe to wsl-vpnkit.exe. 
      Rename-Item C:\bin\com.docker.vpnkit.exe wsl-vpnkit.exze
      The reason for this is that if you are using Docker Desktop on the host computer, it will be executing its own com.docker.vpnkit.exe, and upon start/stop it will terminate any running processes with that name. This means it would also terminate such a process started by wsl-vpnkit, and it would have to be restarted to get it to work again. The workaround for this is to rename the copy of executable used for WSL into somethine else. The wsl-vpnkit script assumes wsl-vpnkit.exe, but you can also use a different name if you configure it with VPNKIT_PATH (see below).
  • Copy the vpnkit-tap-vsockd executable into into the WSL filesystem. Note that it must be put into /sbin and owned by root. For example, from within WSL prompt: 
    sudo cp /mnt/c/bin/vpnkit-tap-vsockd /sbin/vpnkit-tap-vsockd
chown root:root /sbin/vpnkit-tap-vsockd
  • Make the wsl-vpnkit.exe executable accessible from the wsl-vpnkit script, just as with npiperelay.exe described above, but now with script variable VPNKIT_PATH. If the executable was renamed to something other than wsl-vpnkit.exe, then this must also be considered.
  • Configure DNS as described in the VPNKit manual configuration section, below.
  • Finally, run the wsl-vpnkit script from the WSL distro to start the network services, and you should have connectivity from WSL through the host's network connection as long as this script is running!

If you have no internet connectivity in your WSL distro using the default networking, the remaining challenge from the above steps is: How do you install the socat package? What you can do is download the package archive files on your host computer, and install them from file in the WSL distribution using its package tool in "offline-mode", referencing the downloaded package archive files on host through the automatically /mnt/c mount. The package required is called "socat" in most distributions. In addition you may need some dependent packages that are also missing.

Debian:

Ubuntu 20.04:

  • Only missing socat package. Download url can be retrieved by the folowing command in wsl: apt-get install socat --print-uris -qq. Then download this link on host etc, and install it just like with Debian.

Alpine:

  • Tested the official "minimal root filesystem" distribution from alpinelinux.org, so not actually a WSL distribution at all, but works like a charm (except, older versions of the wsl-vpnkit script required bash and it is not included by default, but could easily be downloaded and installed same way as socat).
  • Package downloads from dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/main/x86_64/
  • Packages needed: ncurses-terminfo-base, ncurses-libs, readline, socat (previuosly also bash).
  • Install with apk add --quiet --repositories-file /dev/null <packagefiles>....

Arch:

  • Tested the official "bootstrap" distribution from archlinux.org, so - same as with Alpine: This is a standard image and not a WSL image.
  • Package downloads from archive.archlinux.org/packages
  • Packages needed: socat, iproute2 (optionally also grep and sed).
    • In contrast to most other distros, the basic utilities ip (from iproute2), grep and sed are not included by default in Arch. The main run script wsl-vpnkit requires the ip and grep commands, so these are required. The supplementary install/configure scripts used by the Install-VpnKit and Uninstall-VpnKit functions in Wsl.ps1 also requires sed, but if just performing a minimal manual install it can be skipped.
    • Install with command pacman --upgrade --needed <packagefiles>...

Void:

  • Tested the official "rootfs tarball" distribution from voidlinux.org, so (similar to Arch) not actually a WSL distribution.
  • Package downloads from repo-default.voidlinux.org/current
  • Packages needed: socat.
  • Install with two commands:
    • First the package must be registered in a local repository: xbps-rindex --add <full_path_to_package_file>
    • Next, the package can be installed from the local repository: xbps-install --repository <full_path_to_package_directory> <package_name>

VPNKit manual configuration

To use the VPNKit networking you need to install the complete VPNKit package (Install-VpnKit without parameter -ConfigurationOnly) on (at least) one distribution, and run it from there. Then you can use it from any number of distributions, by simply changing their DNS configuring to go through the same vpnkit service.

In WSL2 all distros run in a single shared virtual machine. This means they all share the same virtual network adapters. When the wsl-vpnkit script is started it will change the ip route of the eth1 network adapter to connect through the vpnkit gateway. If you check in another distro you will see that the same ip route is configured for "its" eth1.

When the wsl-vpnkit script is started from one distro, it sets up the ip route and the process pipe relay from the shared virtual machine to the host machine. The only thing missing for a distribution to work through this connection is the DNS configuration, which is a distribution-specific configuration. By default the VPNKit gateway is bound to IP address 192.168.67.1, so to configure the distro to use this as the nameserver you must add nameserver 192.168.67.1 into file /etc/resolv.conf, and also generateResolvConf = false in section [network] of file /etc/wsl.conf.

The VPNKit program directory created by New-VpnKit contains predefined resolv.conf and wsl.conf that you can copy into you distro. Running the Install-VpnKit with parameter -ConfigurationOnly will basically do the same, just that it tries to avoid overwriting any existing configuration you might have in wsl.conf, and also it installs a script into /usr/local/bin that can be used to revert the changes. You can choose to install the full VPNKit on more than one distribution, but only one can be run (Start-VpnKit) at the same time.

See also sample steps described above for creating additional distributions.