WSLKeeper

WSLKeeper is a lightweight Windows tray app for keeping selected WSL2 distributions alive.

It provides a compact per-distro toggle UI and uses:

wsl -d <DistroName> -e sleep infinity

to prevent idle shutdown for workloads that need long-lived availability (for example SSH/services running inside WSL).

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Features

• Tiny tray-first UI (double-click tray icon to reopen)
• Auto-discovery of distros from wsl -l -v
• Per-distro keepalive toggle
• Running-state indicator (Running / Stopped)
• Auto-refresh loop
• Cleanup on app exit

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How it works

1. WSLKeeper reads distro status using wsl -l -v.
2. When you enable keepalive for a distro, it launches a detached wsl.exe keepalive process.
3. When you disable keepalive, it attempts to stop keepalive for that distro.
4. On application exit, keepalive cleanup is executed.

Note: Keepalive intent (toggle state) and runtime state (distro running/stopped) are intentionally handled as separate signals.

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Requirements

• Windows 10/11 with WSL2 installed
• At least one WSL distro

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Build

This repository can be built from Linux/WSL using .NET SDK 8.

1) Install .NET SDK (if needed)

curl -fsSL https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh -o dotnet-install.sh
bash dotnet-install.sh --channel 8.0 --install-dir ~/.dotnet

2) Publish Windows executable

~/.dotnet/dotnet publish \
  /home/kyaky/projects/WSLKeeper/src/WSLKeeper/WSLKeeper.csproj \
  -c Release \
  -r win-x64 \
  --self-contained true \
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true \
  -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true \
  -o /home/kyaky/projects/WSLKeeper/dist/win-x64

Build output:

• dist/win-x64/WSLKeeper.exe

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Run

Launch WSLKeeper.exe on Windows.

• Minimize sends it to tray
• Double-click tray icon to reopen

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Troubleshooting

Toggle enabled but distro still Stopped

Validate manually in PowerShell:

wsl -d <DistroName> -e sleep infinity

If this command does not stay active, investigate WSL/distro environment first.

List active keepalive processes

Get-CimInstance Win32_Process |
  Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "wsl.exe" -and $_.CommandLine -match "sleep\s+infinity" } |
  Select-Object ProcessId, CommandLine

Force-stop all keepalive processes

Get-CimInstance Win32_Process |
  Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "wsl.exe" -and $_.CommandLine -match "sleep\s+infinity" } |
  ForEach-Object { Stop-Process -Id $_.ProcessId -Force }

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Project status

Stable for practical local use. Ongoing improvements can focus on stricter per-distro process tracking and additional UI polish.