Re: Running debian on WSL (windows-system-for-linux)
On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 08:02:32PM -0700, Dan Hitt wrote:
> Does anybody have any experience running debian on a WSL
> (windows-system-for-linux) machine?
Yes, I use WSL2 on my work machine and run Debian in it.
[...]
> In particular, i would like to
> (a) be able to remotely access the WSL debian just as if it were debian
> box, including having ssh, rsync, and x windows
This is entirely doable. Once you get ssh going you have rsync and X11
tunneling. You don't mention what you'll be connecting from, but if it
doesn't have an X11 server you can run a VNC server under Debian that is an
X11 server, and tunnel VNC over SSH to get to that desktop from whatever
your client is.
> (b) occasionally do the same sorts of things from its console
Easy. It's even pretty easy to run an X11 server on Windows (XMing is an
option, though I prefer Cygwin's X11... yes, I use both WSL2 and Cygwin,
and I mostly use Cygwin) and display to it from WSL2.
> (c) not have to manually set up and keep alive daemons or special services,
I am not entirely certain whether WSL2 comes up on Windows boot, but it
runs services normally when it comes up. You will probably have to muck
with the Windows firewall to redirect ports on the Windows host to the
internal WSL2 IP address. I can't say I've done that. I think WSL2 may be a
per-user thing, so I'm not sure if it can run when you aren't logged in. If
you have yourself logged in with WSL2 up, though, I expect you can switch
users and it will still be up.
> (d) as an extra, keep the debian and windows things on separate disks, if
> possible.
WSL2 uses a file on disk essentially as a block device. I vaguely remember
it being possible to use a disk partition directly, but I don't remember.
You can configure where the disk file lives when you create the WSL2 guest.
> I'm not looking for a multi-boot situation, as i want to be able to access
> the WSL apparatus while the console is engaged with doing windows
> operations for somebody else (and i guess the converse as well, although
> i'm pretty foggy about sshing into windows).
There is also definitely a way to set up Cygwin's ssh as a Windows service
(and it might be automatic, though I'm not sure). That may be what you want
for getting in, then you can use WSL2 from that shell for your other
purposes.
> Thanks in advance for any advice or pointers.
> dan
Good luck,
--Gregory
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