changing mount point from /mnt/c to /c

[raymod2]

Years of using MSYS and MSYS2 has ingrained the habit of referring to the C: drive as "/c" but Bash on Windows uses "/mnt/c". A good solution is using a bind mount:

mkdir -p /c
sudo mount -o bind /mnt/c /c

However, this requires root and needs to be run every time you open a bash window. I tried using /etc/fstab for a persistent mount but I couldn't get it to work:

sudo sh -c "echo '/mnt/c /c none bind' >> /etc/fstab

[jack775544]

As a workaround you could possibly edit your sudoers file to allow any user to use access mount without root privileges and then add that command to your profile script.

[Vaporeon]

Why not just ln -s /mnt/c /c?
I personally think /mnt/x is a more sane default.

[raymod2]

Yeah a soft link works, too. One minor gripe with a soft link is that "ls /c" doesn't work. You need "ls /c/".

[raymod2]

BTW, this ticket is to look into why /etc/fstab doesn't work.

[aseering]

I imagine this is because WSL doesn't perform most normal Linux systemwide initialization. See #511 , for example.

[sgtoj]

@raymod2 Here is the solution.

# created as su to match /mnt/c
sudo mkdir -p /c 
# update /etc/fstab; requires su
sudo sh -c "echo '/mnt/c /c none bind' >> /etc/fstab"
# reload fstab; requires su
sudo mount -a

Ticket probably can be closed now.

[therealkenc]

It's the sudo mount -a that people don't want to run, per what Adam alludes right above. fstab is not respected on WSL instantiation.

It is tempting to dupe these all into #511 ("make systemd work") but now there is precedent in #2530 for adding systemd features to WSL init. I hope that isn't the route this goes, but we'll have to let it play out.

Ref #1854

[sgtoj]

@therealkenc You are correct. I should have posted my answered after testing closing and relaunching a session. Once I noticed I was wrong, I started putting something together to as a work around to share with my team and others.

[sgtoj]

My original solution is the proper linux solution. However, the solution currently does not work for Ubuntu for Windows because mounts are not auto loaded. See @therealkenc comments for more information.

In the meantime, I have documented and posted a short step-by-step guide to implement a workaround.

[therealkenc]

Ref #2636

[d1egoaz]

FYI this is now possible to do it with wsl.conf https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config
root = /

diego@diego-thinkpad:~$ cat /etc/wsl.conf
# Enable extra metadata options by default
[automount]
enabled = true
root = /
options = "metadata,umask=22,fmask=11"
mountFsTab = false

# Enable DNS – even though these are turned on by default, we’ll specify here just to be explicit.
[network]
generateHosts = true
generateResolvConf = true

diego@diego-thinkpad:~$ mount -l | grep drvfs
C: on /c type drvfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=22,fmask=11,metadata)
diego@diego-thinkpad:~$

OS Build: 17107.1000

[Nossiac]

@d1egoaz How to upgrade the latest OS build? The update center gave me " Version 1709, OS build 16299", seems not the one your had mentioned.

[benhillis]

/etc/wsl.conf allows you do do this in 1803.