<path> is not accessible from Windows explorer

[webian]

Version

Windows 11 Pro 22621.900

WSL Version

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

Linux version 5.15.74.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2 (oe-user@oe-host) (x86_64-msft-linux-gcc (GCC) 9.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.34.0.20200220)

Distro Version

Ubuntu 20.04

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

If I try to browse my WSL from Windows Explorer, it often gives me permission errors as in the table below. The Windows user has the same name as the Linux user: tom
Linux user 'tom' is in the 'www-pub' group.

Linux path and permissions                       Accessible from Win?   Writable from Win?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
drwxr-xr-x root     root    var/                 Y                      N
drwxrwsrwx www-data www-pub var/www/             Y                      Y
drwxrwsr-- www-data www-pub var/www/html/        Y                      N
drwxrws--- tom      www-pub var/www/html/test/   N                      n/a

Seems like inconsistent behavior to me.

Expected Behavior

Linux path and permissions                       Accessible from Win?   Writable from Win?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
drwxr-xr-x root     root    var/                 Y                      N
drwxrwsrwx www-data www-pub var/www/             Y                      Y
drwxrwsr-- www-data www-pub var/www/html/        Y                      Y
drwxrws--- tom      www-pub var/www/html/test/   Y                      Y

Actual Behavior

See 'Repro Steps'.

Diagnostic Logs

No response

[webian]

It seems that WSL doesn't recognize 'tom' as user of group 'www-pub'.
By instance: it allows me to browse /var/www/html/ because of the read permission for others. If I remove that permission I can't browse that folder anymore.

[webian]

Also, it doesn't allow me to browse /var/www/html/test until I set x for others for /var/www/html/:
sudo chmod o+x /var/www/html/
and, after this setting, I can also write in /var/www/html/test even if others can't write /var/www/html/ but it is because /var/www/html/test is owned by user 'tom'
If I change owner of /var/www/html/test to 'www-data' then I can't browse it anymore.

[OneBlue]

Thanks for reporting this @webian. What's the default user and groups of your WSL distro ?

Can you share the output of wsl.exe groups and wsl.exe whoami ?

[webian]

PS D:\Users\tom> wsl.exe groups
tom adm dialout cdrom floppy sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev www-pub

PS D:\Users\tom> wsl.exe whoami
tom

A special configuration of my Windows 11 is that user folders are on partition D: instead of C:. Could this affect?

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically closed since it has not had any author activity for the past 7 days. If you're still experiencing this issue please re-open it.

Thank you!

[OneBlue]

Thanks for the details @webian.

I confirm I can reproduce the issue. Digging into the plan9 server logic, I can tell that this is a limitation of the \wsl.localhost at the moment: Additional groups are not processed when accessing files, which is why you're getting access denied

[nietzscheanic]

@OneBlue a reported issue since nearly 2.5 years - and a really annoying one 😢

#5987

[nietzscheanic]

@SvenGroot maybe something you could fix with some magic

[OneBlue]

@nietzscheanic: This issue has been fixed with WSL 1.1.0 (In pre-release for now).

Closing