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Installing and using WSL2 on Windows Server 2022 Core (without the Desktop Experience)

2193 words 11 minutes
Updated on 2022-09-16

Installing and running WSL2 on Windows Server 2022 Core, i.e. without the desktop experience installed, is a bit more involved than when you have the desktop environment available to access locally or via a remote desktop session. Here I’m going to list the required steps, and caveats, for getting WSL2 installed and running in Windows Server 2022 Core.

Some of the steps below involve complex text that needs to be typed or copied into a console session. It is easier to copy and paste with a remote session via “Remote Desktop” to ensure the accuracy of the complex text. This is entirely optional, but can reduce the chance of typos.

  1. Login to your server
  2. If SConfig does not start automatically, launch it by typing sconfig followed by enter
  3. In SConfig choose the “Remote desktop” option by typing 7 followed by enter
  4. Next, press e followed by enter to choose to enable Remote desktop
  5. Decide whether you want to require “network level authentication” for your remote clients. This is the most secure option, and all official Microsoft clients support this feature
  6. If you want to require Network Level Authentication, choose the first option by pressing 1 followed by enter. Otherwise, choose the second option to disable the requirement by pressing 2 followed by enter
  7. Press enter to go back to the main menu

Micsoroft Update should be enabled for WSL2 to keep the Linux kernel and up-to-date automatically, according to the Microsoft documentation.

NOTE: I haven’t checked to see how to set up systems that use WSUS to manage their updates, so this assumes you are not using WSUS.

If your server does not currently have Microsft Update enabled, which will be the case if you haven’t explicitly enabled it as part of another installation or by any other means, then you can enable it with the steps below.

NOTE: I recommend doing these steps in a Remote Desktop session so that you can copy and paste the command to avoid any typos in the UUID value (the long hexadecimal text)

  1. Log into your server as an administrator
  2. If SConfig starts automatically, exit to a console session
  3. If PowerShell is not your default shell, start it by typing powershell followed by enter
  4. In PowerShell run the following command: 
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    (New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.ServiceManager).AddService2("7971f918-a847-4430-9279-4a52d1efe18d",6,"")

Thank you to Don Zoomik for converting the VBScript example on Microsoft Docs to PowerShell shared via StackOverflow, which I’ve based this on. I used a different flag 6 instead of 7 from the example to ensure that Microsoft Update is registered immediately.

We now need to ensure that your Windows Server 2022 installation has run at least once after enabling Microsoft Update. We also verify that all quality updates are installed from Microsoft Update. This is easy with the SConfig utility:

  1. Log into your server as an administrator
  2. If SConfig does not start automatically, launch it by typing sconfig followed by enter
  3. Press the 6 key on your keyboard to select the “Install Updates” option, and press enter
  4. Choose the “All quality updates” option by pressing the 1 key followed by enter
  1. Press a followed by enter to install all the available updates
  2. If prompted to reboot press y followed by enter to reboot your server
  3. Otherwise press enter to return to the main menu

Repeat these three steps until you have successfully installed all available updates.

  1. Press enter to return to the main menu. Your system is already up to date so we don’t need to do anything further here

Once your server is configured for Microsoft Update and fully up-to-date with patches, by following the process above, we can install WSL2.

  1. Login to your server as an administrator

  2. If SConfig starts automatically, exit to a console session

  3. Use the following command to install WSL2:

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    wsl --install

  4. You now need to reboot your server for WSL2 to be usable for the next steps

    NOTE: The wsl --install command will print the following two errors as part of its output. They can be safely ignored.

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    A error was encountered during installation, but installation may continue. Component: 'WSL Kernel' Error Code: 0x80040154
A error was encountered during installation, but installation may continue. Component: 'Ubuntu' Error Code: 0x80040154

    I’m unsure what causes the first error, but we will work around it by installing the kernel manually via the MSI package in the next step.

    The second error is a byproduct of running on a system without the Desktop Experience and its supporting infrastructure. The install command attempts to download and install the Ubuntu distro, or another distro if you select one when issuing the wsl --install command, from the Windows Store but fails with a message similar to the one above.

    The reason for the failure is that the distros on the Windows Store are distributed as .appx packages. These packages are unsupported (as far as I can tell) on Servers without the Desktop Experience enabled, so the installation attempt fails. We will work around this in the next section.

Once your server is rebooted, we need to manually install the WSL2 kernel via an .msi package or WSL2 will not function at all.

  1. Login to your server as an administrator
  2. If SConfig starts automatically, exit to a console session
  3. Download the MSI package with: 
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    curl -o wsl_update_x64.cab https://catalog.s.download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/software/updt/2022/03/wsl_update_x64_8b248da7042adb19e7c5100712ecb5e509b3ab5f.cab

    NOTE: you can find the latest kernel package by loading https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=wsl in your web browser, and selecting the download button to the right of the newest entry. The popup window will include two links; one for x64 and one for arm64. Right-click the x64 link and select “copy link” or equivalent. When you have the address copied to your system clipboard, paste it into the command above replacing the original address.

  4. Expand the MSI package from the .cab file 
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    expand.exe wsl_update_x64.cab wsl_update_x64.msi
  5. Install it with: 
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    msiexec.exe /package wsl_update_x86.msi /passive /promptrestart

  1. Choose a distro from the list below and copy the URL

    NOTE: if you can find a filesystem .tar.gz file for your preferred Linux Distro, you may use that.

    For example, Ubuntu provides suitable files at https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/. You will find the appropriate .tar.gz file within the directory for your chosen Ubuntu release codename with the suffix -server-cloudimg-amd64-wsl.rootfs.tar.gz, e.g. https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/jammy/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-wsl.rootfs.tar.gz for the Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) release. Ubuntu only provides suitable images since the 16.04 (Xenial) release.

  2. Login to your server (preferably as an unprivileged user)

  3. If SConfig starts automatically, exit to a console session

  4. If PowerShell is not your default shell, start it by typing powershell followed by enter

  5. If you are using a URL from the above list, insert it into the following command replacing https://aka.ms/wslubuntu2204. Paste or type the whole, amended, command into PowerShell and execute it by pressing enter:

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    curl.exe -L -o wsl-distro.zip https://aka.ms/wslubuntu2204

    Otherwise, if you have the direct link to a .tar.gz file, download it directly and skip to step 11:

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    curl.exe -L -o install.tar.gz https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/jammy/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-wsl.rootfs.tar.gz

  6. Unpack the ZIP file with:

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    Expand-Archive wsl-distro.zip .\extracted-distro-step1

  7. Use Get-ChildItem .\extracted-distro-step1 to list the contents of the directory .\extracted-distro-step1, which is where we unpacked the ZIP file.

  8. Find the name of the .appx file that contains the actual WSL2 filesystem .tar.gz file; it will be named like distro.appx, distro_x64.appx, or distro.*_x64.appx, where distro is the name of the distro you downloaded, and * is the a version number like 0.10.0 - the actual nunmber isn’t important as it should be the same for every .appx file in the extracted directory. e.g. For Ubuntu 22.04 the filename from the package that I downloaded while preparing this tutorial was Ubuntu_2204.0.10.0_x64.appx.

  9. With the file name you discovered in the previous step, renaming the .appx file to be suffixed .zip and extract it with the following two commands:

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    Rename-Item .\extracted-distro-step1\Ubuntu_2204.0.10.0_x64.appx distro.zip
Expand-Archive .\extracted-distro-step1\distro.zip .\extracted-distro-step2

  10. Use Get-ChildItem .\extracted-distro-step2 to find the .tar.gz file included in the extracted .appx file. For Ubuntu 22.04 this file is named install.tar.gz, but different distros may vary the name they use

  11. Import the filesystem .tar.gz file as a new WSL2 distro with this command:

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    mkdir C:\Users\Administrator\WSL-disks
wsl --import Ubuntu2204 C:\Users\Administrator\WSL-disks\Ubuntu2204 .\extracted-distro-step2\install.tar.gz

    Replace Ubuntu2204 with any name you desire. This will be used to identify your distro instance in wsl --list output, and for you to explicitly select if it isn’t the default distro with wsl --distro Ubuntu2204.

    Also replace C:\Users\Administrator\WSL-disks\Ubuntu2204 with any directory you have writable access to. This directory will be used to store the virtual disk image that holds the distro’s filesystem - the disk image will be named ext4.vhdx. Each distro instance that you import should use a unique directory to prevent overwriting a different distro instance’s disk image. The parent directory, here C:\Users\Administrator\WSL-disks, must already exist, but the Ubuntu2204 directory will be created by wsl --import.

    If you downloaded and extracted an .appx package, replace .\extracted-distro-step2\install.tar.gz with the path to the distro’s .tar.gz filesystem archive that you found in the extracted-distro-step2 directory. Otherwise, if you downloaded a .tar.gz file directly replace .\extracted-distro-step2\install.tar.gz with the path to the .tar.gz file you downloaded.

  12. Start the distro with wsl --distro Ubuntu2204. Again, replace Ubuntu2204 with the name you assigned your distro instance

  13. Create an unprivileged user so that you may run without root privileges until required. This is Linux best practice, as running as root by default is discouraged. Add the user with the following commands:

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    adduser desired-username
adduser desired-username users
adduser desired-username sudo

    You will be prompted to provide a password for the user, and again to confirm that you typed it correctly. You may not see any output as you type the password as the output is usually disabled while entering passwords. Some distros will print * characters as you type a password into the prompt to provide feedback but this is quite rare.

    NOTE: some distros don’t have a sudo group. These distros often use wheel instead, so if you get a message indicating that there is no sudo group on the system then replace sudo with wheel in the command and try again.

  14. Configure the WSL2 distro to default to your new user account when launching a shell, unless overidden with the --user parameter when calling wsl (e.g. wsl --user root --distro Ubuntu2204):

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    cat > /etc/wsl.conf <<'EOF'
[user]
default = "desired-username"
EOF

    The command above uses a “heredoc”, which is a POSIX shell feature that copies the contents between two markers, here 'EOF' and EOF (the quotes around the first EOF tell the shell not to expand any variables that might be in the heredoc. Variables are indicated by a $ sign followed by name, e.g. $HOME.) The marker at the end of the heredoc must be on a line by itself with no leading spaces.

    In the command above we’re using redirectors << to copy the heredoc into the command cat. We are using a different redirector > /etc/wsl.conf to take the output of cat and write it into the file named /etc/wsl.conf. This combination of redirections with the cat command allow us to write a heredoc directly into a file that we choose to save us using a text editor.

    If you prefer to use a text editor then that is fine. Ensure that you add the following content into the /etc/wsl.conf file with your preferred text editor:

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    [user]
default = "desired-username"

    NOTE: The wsl.conf file follows the INI file, with headings, format.

    You can find out about the other options you can add into the wsl.conf file in Advanced settings configuration in WSL on the WSL section of the Microsoft Docs website.

  15. Finally, terminate the WSL2 distro instance so that your changes to /etc/wsl.conf are recognised; in PowerShell run:

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    wsl.exe --terminate Ubuntu2204

Congratulations, you now have WSL2 installed, and have set up a distro instance for your Windows User.

WSL2 distros are not shared system-wide so each user on the Server has their own separate WSL2 instances if they install any, and cannot access another user’s instances.

NOTE: User accounts do not need any special privileges to run WSL2 distros.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that despite the documentation provided by Microsoft indicating that enabling Microsoft Update will keep the Linux kernel updated automatically, I don’t believe this currently works in Windows Server 2022. We’ve performed the required steps to enable the capability but it seems that WSL2 and Microsoft Update do not currently update the kernel on Windows Server 2022 installations. You cannot update the kernel with wsl --update, either, as the command will report that the currently running kernel is already up-to-date even if Microsoft have released updated versions. For now, use the Microsoft Update Catalog as shown in the Installing the WSL2 kernel section above.

Lucy is a prominent member of the WordPress, Ubuntu, WSL, and Snapcraft communities. She currently sits on the Ubuntu Membership Board and is a former Microsoft MVP.
Lucy is a prominent member of the WordPress, Ubuntu, WSL, and Snapcraft communities. She currently sits on the Ubuntu Membership Board and is a former Microsoft MVP.