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Installing WSL2 on Windows

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Fernando edited this page Oct 11, 2021 · 5 revisions

Installing WSL2 on Windows

WSL 2 is a new version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux architecture that enables the Windows Subsystem for Linux to run Linux binaries on Windows. This tool is needed by qa-ctl for integrating Ansible in Windows, as there isn't any native support for this tool in Windows. We are using WSL2 as is the version that is able to work with docker. Two different installation options are depending on the Windows version that you are currently using. These two different ways are:

Installing WSL2 in Windows build 19041 or higher

Note: To be able to use this method, you need to have your Windows system updated as this command is only available with the latest update packages.

If your own a Windows system with a higher build than 19041, you only need to run this single command:

wsl --install

After the command execution is done, reboot your PC and you'll have wsl installed and the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

If this method seems to not work with your system, follow the Installing WSL2 in Windows with older builds section.

Installing WSL2 in Windows with older builds

If you are using a system with an inferior build version, there are a few steps that you have to follow to get WSL2 on your system

1. Enabling Windows Subsystem for Linux

Before you can get WSL2, you need to have WSL. Open PowerShell as administrator and enter this command:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

2. Enabling Virtual Machine

WSL2 is a tiny virtual machine, so Windows needs to be prepared for that:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

After running the command above, reboot your PC.

3. Downloading and installing WSL2

  • Download the WSL2 Kernel update and run the installer. When prompted for elevated permissions, click yes. Once the installer process is over you'll have WSL2 successfully installed on your PC.
  • Now you have to set WSL2 as your default version. That can be done by running the next command:
wsl --set-default-version 2
  • After all the steps above are completed, you can proceed to download the Ubuntu on Windows application on the store.

Creating the wslconfig file

You can add a file named .wslconfig to your Windows home directory to control global WSL options across Linux distributions.

In our case, this file is created to limit the resources that wls consumes for the Virtual machines, mainly the assigned memory. We can specify the amount of memory that wsl is allowed to take from Windows. The lines specified below forces wsl to consume 3GB as a max memory value, without a swap memory and allowing forwarding localhost ports connection. You can learn more about the allowed parameters in this file, check this link

[wsl2]
memory=3GB
swap=0
localhostForwarding=true

Setting up Ubuntu subsystem

Once WSL2 has been installed and configured, you need to configure the downloaded Ubuntu subsystem for Windows. To do so, follow the next steps:

  1. Open Windows Powershell and type wsl
  2. Enter the desired username and password for your subsystem.
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