NOTE: If you have Windows 11 there is now an official way to do this in WSL 2, use it if possible - see MS post here (WINDOWS 11 ONLY)
This guide will enable systemd
to run as normal under WSL 2. This will enable services like microk8s
, docker
and many more to just work
during a WSL session. Note: this was tested on Windows 10 Build 2004, running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in WSL 2.
-
To enable
systemd
under WSL we require a tool calledsystemd-genie
-
Copy the contents of
install-sg.sh
to a new file/tmp/install-sg.sh
:cd /tmp wget --content-disposition \ "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/djfdyuruiry/6720faa3f9fc59bfdf6284ee1f41f950/raw/952347f805045ba0e6ef7868b18f4a9a8dd2e47a/install-sg.sh"
-
Make it executable:
chmod +x /tmp/install-sg.sh
-
Run the new script:
/tmp/install-sg.sh && rm /tmp/install-sg.sh
-
Exit the WSL terminal and shutdown the WSL env:
wsl --shutdown
-
To open a new WSL terminal with
systemd
enabled, run:wsl genie -s
-
Prove that it works:
sudo systemctl status time-sync.target
It's possible to use the above script with WSL2 Debian 11 -- but, I wouldn't recommend it. Too many differences in dependencies, plus this script adds Ubuntu repositories to sources.list -- which you need to reverse, or you won't be able to use apt. So, I went ahead and forked this Gist and modified it for Debian 11, plus updated genie to version 2.2. There's a new warning when you launch genie about default.target vs multiuser.target, but I believe the default is set to multi-user out-of-the-box. Check your sources.list to be sure you're on Debian 11 (Bullseye), and confirm that you have backports added. See the attached image for how it should look, and a proof-of-life for systemd running on WSL Debian 11. :-)
My fork of this Gist can be found @ https://gist.github.com/bnhf