ArchWSL

Note

When in doubt, use the ArchWSL documentation.

For me, the simplest procedure to install the Distro was to

1. Download the latest Arch.zip file from the project’s release page

2. Extract it to a folder where your user has unrestricted read/write permissions (so ideally stay away from Program Files, etc.)

3. Run the included Arch.exe

4. Change the root password

   passwd

5. Add the wheel group to the allowed sudo users

   echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel

6. Choose a username for your new user

   export username={username}

   and add this new user to the wheel group

   useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash $username

7. Change the new user’s password

   passwd $username

8. Exit the WSL environment

   exit

9. Set the new user as the default one

   Arch.exe config --default-user {username}

10. Reboot the PC or alternatively restart LxssManager with

    net stop lxssmanager
    net start lxssmanager

11. After that reenter WSL with

    Arch.exe

12. Setup the pacman keyring

    sudo pacman-key --init
    sudo pacman-key --populate
    sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring

13. Update the base system

    sudo pacman -Su

Tip

You can update your mirrorlist with your nearest mirrors.

1. Backup your original mirrorlist.

   sudo cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

2. Generate a mirrorlist and save it to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

   curl -s "https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=DE&protocol=http&protocol=https&ip_version=4&use_mirror_status=on" \
   | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

3. Uncomment desired lines in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and move them to the top

Alternatively you can automatically pick the 5 best mirrors and save them, although you need the pacman-contrib package installed for the rankmirrors command.

sudo pacman -Syu pacman-contrib
curl -s "https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=DE&protocol=http&protocol=https&ip_version=4&use_mirror_status=on" \
| sed -e 's/^#Server/Server/' -e '/^#/d' \
| rankmirrors -n 5 - \
| sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Just Works^TM? Special

Note

This should only be neccessary if you’re behind a (corporate) http proxy.

As I’m sitting behind a corporate http proxy, I initially had no access to the internet.

This can be confirmed by running

curl https://archlinux.org

To make WSL proxy-aware, I needed to

1. Add the exports to the ~/.bashrc with

   ~/.bashrc

   export http_proxy=http://<hostname>:<port>
   export https_proxy=$http_proxy
   export ftp_proxy=$http_proxy

   Xonsh

   Preemptively add the environment variables to ~/.config/xonsh/env.xsh

   ~/.config/xonsh/env.xsh

   $http_proxy = "http://<hostname>:<port>"
   $https_proxy = $http_proxy
   $ftp_proxy = $http_proxy

   Nushell

   Nothing more to do, as nushell will get invoked through ~/.bashrc

2. Source it

   source ~/.bashrc

3. Allow sudo to pass these environment variables through by setting the env_keep property in /etc/sudoers.d/proxy

   /etc/sudoers.d/proxy

   Defaults env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy ftp_proxy"

Rerunning the curl-command should now produce a response and pacman should update and upgrade just fine:

sudo pacman -Syyuu