WSL2 setup

Introduction

WSL2, although provides a nice unix-y abilities while on windows, still has quite a bit of rough edges! This collects all the issues I have faced with WSL2 and some fixes/workarounds that others have suggested. This assumes that you know how to and also have installed WSL2 on your device.

prevent /etc/resolv.conf from getting overwritten

This file is responsible for containing your DNS information. By default, this gets overwritten upon every shutdown/startup. To fix this, you need the following lines put inside /etc/wsl.conf: generateResolvConf = false. IOW:

sudo tee /etc/wsl.conf << EOF
[network]
generateResolvConf = false
EOF

I think this requires a shutdown/startup of WSL2.

/etc/resolv.conf gets deleted upon shutdown/startup

This happens even after one has updated the /etc/wsl.conf to explicitly prevent the OS from rewriting this file upon startup! Full issue can be found here. This seems to be a regression in WSL2. So, for now, the solution is to make this file write-protected by doing: sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf. Obviously, this means that you wont be able to modify this file later as well! So, you'll have to remove the write protection before modifying this file and then adding it back afterwards.

Network not working (while NOT on VPN)

This is one of the common issues. If you are NOT on VPN, then you need to make sure that the DNS server as shown by your windows command ipconfig /all has been updated inside the /etc/resolv.conf. If your system has Intel WiFi adapter then the following powershell command gives you the DNS servers (Reference):

(Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object InterfaceDescription -like "Intel*" | Get-DnsClientServerAddress).ServerAddresses

Network not working (while on VPN)

Same as above, but you can use the following command (for eg if you are using Cisco's AnyConnect VPN) to know the DNS servers:

(Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object InterfaceDescription -like "Cisco*" | Get-DnsClientServerAddress).ServerAddresses

Additionally, I have noticed that it helps to also add the domain directive which helps resolve short hostnames, if some of the URIs you are using while on VPN connection could be shortened.

emacs

If you are on Windows 11, it already natively supports running GUI apps. On top of that, emacs already also added support for pure GTK. So, build emacs from source with adding the option --with-pgtk to the "configure" command to make use of this feature.

After a shutdown, launch of a fresh WSL2 instance fails

The error message seen is: The Windows Subsystem for Linux instance has terminated.

Update 26/05/2022: As per this issue It is typically caused due to failure to mount NAS drives (in my case they are work-related network drives which are mounted while I'm on VPN). However, in my case, it fails even when I'm on VPN.

TODO: haven't yet found a reliable solution that worked for me!

Fresh WSL2 instance takes quite a bit of time to start

Basically, everytime I start a fresh WSL2 instance (for eg: after a wsl --shutdown), I have noticed that it takes almost 5-10 seconds before the commandline shows up. I have seen this happening only after my upgrade to Windows 11.

Update 26/05/2022: There are some nice tips on this issue however none of them helped me, except for looking at the output of dmesg after the terminal comes up. The issue in my case turned out to be mounting my network drives for work purposes. That takes a while, I need those and thus there's not much I can do about it! :(