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Windows 10 and WSL2

Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2020 2:33 am
by jussij
With the Windows 10, version 2004 release it is now possible to install WSL2 using the Windows Update feature: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandl ... sion-2004/

With WSL2 installed it is then possible to access the Linux subsystem via the Windows command prompt:
wsl-cmd.png
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However, trying to run that same command from inside of Zeus results in this error:
zeus-err.png
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This happens because Zeus is a 32 bit application and the wsl.exe executable is only found in the PATH environment for 64 bit executables.

To access the Linux subsystem from inside Zeus you need to use the 32 bit version of the wsl.exe executable which is found here:

Code: Select all

C:\Windows\Sysnative\wsl.exe
To run the same command from within Zeus you need to use the 32 bit version of this command line as shown below:

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C:\Windows\Sysnative\wsl.exe cat /etc/os-release
Running that command line then results in the expected output:
zeus-cmd.png
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Using this approach you can easily setup Linux tools and compiler commands that can be run inside of Zeus.

Updating the PATH
If you open a command line prompt from inside Zeus and try to run these same commands you will once again run into this error:
wsl-z-err.png
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This is because Zeus will have started a 32 bit cmd.exe executable meaning we once again have the same mismatch as described earlier.

To fix all off these issue the best option is to just add the location to the PATH environment variable.

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C:\Windows\Sysnative\
This then allows these commands to be run without the need to for the [code[C:\Windows\Sysnative\[/code] folder details:
wsl-z-path.png
wsl-z-path.png (35.78 KiB) Viewed 30110 times
Cheers Jussi