Thanks to all who have responded here, it helped me cobble together my own take on this.
For context: Probably due to domain group policy, use of static IP addresses with WSL permission inbound/outbound rules on Windows Firewall did not work for me reliably. On some boots the static Linux IP address and SSH listener on it work, on other boots - not even pinging (from Windows host). Using powershell in windows explicitly to poke the linux VM is clumsy (gotta remember to do it on all reboots, or use task scheduler or some such...)
Ergo - let Linux guest do all its magic!
- Probably need to get PowerShell installed into Windows, as for other solutions (in particular allows to elevate the call for port forwarding on host OS side) :)
- Create
/root/setup-network.sh:
#!/bin/sh
https://superuser.com/a/1723531/433945
Add to /etc/wsl.conf boot/command=... for autostart?
PATH="/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:$PATH"
export PATH
Fenced with a separate touch-file, an IP address might be not
available when this first runs - allow reentry until success!
Assumes first IP is the one generated by WSL anew for each VM boot.
AUTOIP="hostname -I | awk '{print $1}'"
if [ -n "$AUTOIP" ] && [ ! -f /dev/shm/network-initialized-fwd ] ; then
powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process netsh.exe -ArgumentList "interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=22099 connectport=22 connectaddress=$AUTOIP" -Verb RunAs"
# Consider similar forwards for X11, VNC, etc.
touch /dev/shm/network-initialized-fwd
fi
(Optionally) shield the rest of such init (assuming SSHD listens
on IP_ANY, so starting it once suffices)
[ -f /dev/shm/network-initialized ] && exit
ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep sshd || sudo service ssh start
I've also had problems resolving Internet DNS, so this settled in
(also works if /etc/resolv.conf is a dangling symlink to non-existent
dir below, by default). Specifically, my problem was having the
resolver re-generated from Windows host settings, and not having
VPN etc. access to the domain DNS server to actually resolve stuff.
Per my notes, https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/6977 might
also help: /etc/wsl.conf => [network] => generateResolvConf=false
grep 8.8.8.8 /etc/resolv.conf || {
sudo mkdir -p /run/resolvconf/ &&
echo 'nameserver 8.8.8.8' | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf
}
touch /dev/shm/network-initialized
- And add this into Linux guest's
/etc/wsl.conf as
[boot]
command="/root/setup-network.sh"
- Alternately, call it in your user's
~/.profile (maybe place in its homedir to be accessible) - it does work, but only after you first open a terminal to WSL. Some may deem it more secure and better facilitating host OS boots vs. UAC pop-up noted below.
Upon first start of the guest/session after host boot (or wsl --shutdown and subsequent start) Windows may ask for UAC permissions for that netsh command called from the guest system. But now it is all constrained in the guest and tied to using it.
