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
After taking a look at the script, it is very simple, and you can change the dotnet-runtime version along with the distro version and genie version based on what you have or need. It simply downloads and installs the genie version specified, after installing all the dependances starting with packages-microsoft-prod.deb which will add Microsoft repository needed to fetch and install the required dotnet-runtime in addition to the other pre requisites (apt-transport-https, daemonize, systemd-container).