Access WSL files from cygwin

Access WSL files from cygwin

[Cary Lewis]

Is there a way to access files from a WSL 2 Linux distro from Cygwin?

From Windows:

\\wsl$\Ubuntu is accessible from Windows Explorer, but cygwin does not seem
to recogonize:

//wsl\$

nor does it recognize //HOSTNAME/wsl\$

but //HOSTNAME/c\$ works.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Re: Access WSL files from cygwin

[Eliot Moss]

On 2/7/2021 9:40 AM, Cary Lewis via Cygwin wrote:
 > Is there a way to access files from a WSL 2 Linux distro from Cygwin?

 >>From Windows:

 > \\wsl$\Ubuntu is accessible from Windows Explorer, but cygwin does not seem
 > to recogonize:

 > //wsl\$

 > nor does it recognize //HOSTNAME/wsl\$

 > but //HOSTNAME/c\$ works.

 > Thanks for any help you can provide.

On my system it lives in:

/c/Users/moss/AppData/Local/Packages/CanonicalGroupLimited.UbuntuonWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc/LocalState/rootfs

(Yuck.)  There may be (probably is) a link somewhere.  //wsl is probably some
"magical" active link.

By searching for ubuntu in the registry I found:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss\{d10ee784-05b0-4c00-be54-cba0d7e7a471}

Its key BasePath has to path to that rootfs.  I don;t know how stable that hex
package id is, or whether it matters which Linux you've installed, etc.  Also,
I am running WSL 1, not WSL 2.  I would think that WSL maintains a file
somewhere with the information about distros and where they are, but I am not
sure where that might be.

A StakcOverflow posting said to look in:

C:\Users\"yourusername">\AppData\Local\Packages\"xxxxx"\LocalState\root\fs

The xxxxx varies by specific Linux distro/version.

Naturally I would be careful *writing* anything down there, but I expect
reading would be ok.

HTH -- EM

Re: Access WSL files from cygwin

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2021-02-07, Cary Lewis via Cygwin wrote:

> Is there a way to access files from a WSL 2 Linux distro from Cygwin?
>
> From Windows:
>
> \\wsl$\Ubuntu is accessible from Windows Explorer, but cygwin does not seem
> to recogonize:
>
> //wsl\$

I use following fstab to get access to WSL 1:

//wsl$/debian /wsl/debian      ntfs binary,posix=0,user,noacl,notexec 0 0
//wsl$/ubuntu /wsl/ubuntu      ntfs binary,posix=0,user,noacl,notexec 0 0
//wsl$/alpine /wsl/alpine      ntfs binary,posix=0,user,noacl,notexec 0 0

There are problems to access some files (their attributes) but they are
special like /dev...

I have never tried WSL 2. I believe it uses P9 network fs.

Probably you have to use full distro names as reported by:

  wslconfig.exe /list

not just '//wsl$'.

See following:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-for-wsl-in-windows-10-version-1903/
  Announce of P9 server for WSL compatible with UNC.

Cygwin works with UNC according to the doc, that's why I tried it with fstab.

-- 
http://defun.work/