wsl-vpnkit

The wsl-vpnkit script uses VPNKit and npiperelay to provide network connectivity to the WSL 2 VM while connected to VPNs on the Windows host. This requires no settings changes or admin privileges on the Windows host.

The releases bundle the script together with VPNKit and npiperelay in an Alpine distro.

Setup

Download the prebuilt file wsl-vpnkit.tar.gz from the latest release and import the distro into WSL 2. Running the distro will show a short intro and exit.

# PowerShell

wsl --import wsl-vpnkit $env:USERPROFILE\wsl-vpnkit wsl-vpnkit.tar.gz
wsl -d wsl-vpnkit

Start wsl-vpnkit from your other WSL 2 distros. Add the command to your .profile or .bashrc to start wsl-vpnkit when you open your WSL terminal.

wsl.exe -d wsl-vpnkit service wsl-vpnkit start

Notes

• Ports on the WSL 2 VM are accessible from the Windows host using localhost.
• Ports on the Windows host are accessible from WSL 2 using host.internal, 192.168.67.2, or the IP address of the host machine.

Update

To update, unregister the existing distro and import the new version.

# PowerShell

wsl --unregister wsl-vpnkit
wsl --import wsl-vpnkit $env:USERPROFILE\wsl-vpnkit wsl-vpnkit.tar.gz

Uninstall

To uninstall, unregister the distro.

# PowerShell

wsl --unregister wsl-vpnkit
rm -r $env:USERPROFILE\wsl-vpnkit

Build

This will build and import the distro.

git clone https://github.com/sakai135/wsl-vpnkit.git
cd wsl-vpnkit/

./distro/test.sh

Using wsl-vpnkit as a standalone script

The wsl-vpnkit script can be used as a normal script in your existing distro. This is an example setup script for Ubuntu.

USERPROFILE=$(wslpath "$(powershell.exe -c 'Write-Host -NoNewline $env:USERPROFILE')")
mkdir -p "$USERPROFILE/wsl-vpnkit"

sudo apt install p7zip-full socat

wget https://github.com/sakai135/vpnkit/releases/download/v0.5.0-20211026/vpnkit-tap-vsockd
wget https://github.com/sakai135/vpnkit/releases/download/v0.5.0-20211026/vpnkit.exe
mv vpnkit.exe "$USERPROFILE/wsl-vpnkit/wsl-vpnkit.exe"
chmod +x vpnkit-tap-vsockd
sudo chown root:root vpnkit-tap-vsockd
sudo mv vpnkit-tap-vsockd /usr/local/sbin/vpnkit-tap-vsockd

wget https://github.com/jstarks/npiperelay/releases/download/v0.1.0/npiperelay_windows_amd64.zip
7z e npiperelay_windows_amd64.zip npiperelay.exe
rm npiperelay_windows_amd64.zip
mv npiperelay.exe "$USERPROFILE/wsl-vpnkit/"

sudo ./wsl-vpnkit

Troubleshooting

Configure VS Code Remote WSL Extension

If VS Code takes a long time to open your folder in WSL, enable the setting "Connect Through Localhost".

Try shutting down WSL 2 VM to reset

# PowerShell

wsl --shutdown
kill -Name wsl-vpnkit