I am using WSL2 on my development PC and I need to move to the new PC. What is the recommended approach to migrate all "WSL distributions" to the new PC ?
Do I need to back up each "WSL distributions" separately by command(s) like:
wsl --export Ubuntu-20.04 C:\WSL-Backup\ubuntu.tar
Or is there any "magic backup-all" command ?
I do not think that copying whole directory \\wsl$\ would be the right way to do the trick.
The question can be put simpler: "How to automate WSL backup? In order to make sure that it can be recovered later"
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I've installed wsl2 on my windows machine and I was not able to figure out where the files are actually stored.
Note, that I don't mean that I wanna browse them inside the file explorer - I know it can be done by typing in the explorer \\wsl$\.
If I would have to guess I would say the files are stored in the same hard-drive that the os is stored.
So actually I have two related questions.
Where the files are stored?
If they are stored in the hard drive of my os, can I somehow relocate my wsl to another hard drive?
EDIT:
I was able to locate the installation path, in my machine the path is:
C:\Users\Eliran\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState
Is there a way to mount this to another location?
All the files are stored in a ext4.vhd files in the installation directory, which you can't mount directly onto windows as it is in ext4 (obv)
There's two ways to change the location of the above mentioned vhd file the official, tedious way and an unofficial quick and dirty way
The official tedious way
Export the distro to a location with wsl.exe --export <Distro> <FileName> from CMD/PowerShell
Import the distro to a different location with wsl.exe --import <Distro> <InstallLocation> <FileName> [Options]
The problems with this is it's quite time consuming and after you do this, pray that it exported and imported several gigabytes worth of thousands of files without any problems
The quick and dirty way
This involes an unofficial opensource WSL manager called lxrunoffline
To install it (takes like a min at max) read through the instructions by the dev here
If you installed it by manually downloading the binaries from the release page, make sure to install it to a directory in PATH, like C:\Windows
Now the process is simple as lxrunoffline move -n <distroname> -d <destination-folder>
For example lxrunoffline move -n Ubuntu-20.04 -d G:\wsl\
Hope I helped
Edit: typo
I executed these commands in PowerShell to move my Ubuntu distro from C: to drive D:\wsl-ubuntu :
PS C:\Users\smarc> mkdir D:\wsl-ubuntu (create new location)
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl -l -v (list wsl distros)
NAME STATE VERSION
Ubuntu Running 2
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl --shutdown
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl -l -v (verify if is stopped)
NAME STATE VERSION
Ubuntu Stopped 2
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl --export Ubuntu ubuntu.tar
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl --unregister Ubuntu
PS C:\Users\smarc> wsl --import Ubuntu D:\wsl-ubuntu\ .\ubuntu.tar --version 2
and reboot the computer at the end.
The only problem I have is that the default user when I started the Ubuntu application is the root. I need to execute $ su sergio to enter in my personal user.
You can delete the ubuntu.tar at the end of process.
#edit 2021-04-13: As pointed out in the comments, I had forgotten the "--export" command.
This is an answer to your last question: use symbolic links
open command prompt as administrator
shut down wsl vm using wsl --shutdown
change folder to C:\Users\Eliran\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\
move the LocalState folder to another location like Z:\wsl\Ubuntu\
create symbolic link with mklink /J LocalState Z:\WSL\Ubuntu\LocalState
I would also edit/create the .wslconfig file from your user folder to move the swap file to the folder where you store your WSL vm's and maybe edit/add options for CPU cores and RAM assignment
[wsl2]
memory=4GB
processors=2
swap=1GB
swapFile=Z:\\WSL\\swap.vhdx
memory is the maximum amount your ram that WSL will use;
processors is the alocated cores to your WSL vm;
swap is the size of the swap file;
swapFile is the location of your swap and to my knowledge is used by all WSL vm's; notice the double slashes in the path, they are mandatory for the path.
Start your WSL VM as you normally would.
I recently moved my wsl directory to another drive due to low storage in C: drive. As per the answer provided in this StackOverflow post, I used lxrunoffline tool and moved my Ubuntu distribution to another drive (E:\wsl in my case). As soon as the distribution was moved successfully, I ran wsl to test and it worked like a charm.
Everything went fine until one day I accidentally renamed the E:\wsl folder to something else. Well, as expected, wsl didn't work. Then, I reverted back to the name wsl and expected it to work but to my surprise, it didn't find any installed distribution after that even though it's installed... 😕
E:> wsl
Windows Subsystem for Linux has no installed distributions.
Distributions can be installed by visiting the Microsoft Store:
https://aka.ms/wslstore
Is there any way to revert back to the old directory or make wsl point to a manual location?
EDIT: I don't want to reset Ubuntu as I want to retain the installed packages and preferences...
Well, I finally found a solution to this problem. 😊
This is as simple as registering the distribution using lxrunoffline tool using the rg or register command.
E:\LxRunOffline\LxRunOffline-v3.3.3>lxrunoffline rg
[ERROR] the option '-d' is required but missing
Options:
-n arg Name of the distribution
-d arg The directory containing the distribution.
-c arg The config file to use. This argument is optional.
After running the register command, I was able to start wsl as usual. But that would log you in as a "root" user and would thus start in "/root" directory. I ran the following command to start wsl as different user (this is for Ubuntu):
ubuntu config --default-user <user-name>
I am facing the problems when restoring the "/" partition into the newly centos. My plan is to restore the backed-up centos (which has few packages installed like openstack) into a new machine.
The restore process goes as part of PXE boot. I have got some kind of kickstart files which does the stuff.
My PXE is in the order
Install some packages before CENT OS
Install CENT OS
Copy the backed-up "/" data into "/" on latest
Unfortunately, the new Cent OS is not starting going into Emergency mode and asking me to press Ctrl+D.
Any help is really great !!
I am using rsnapshot for backup the Cent OS stuff. I have to exclude some directories in order to make it work after restoration of Cent OS.
Here is my rsnapshot.conf file changes.
backup root#192.168.0.1:/ remote-backup/ exclude=/proc,exclude=/sys,exclude=/boot/grub,exclude=/boot/grub2,exclude=/etc/fstab,exclude=/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
The above backup is with root. Make sure you exclude those specified directories. Otherwise system doesn't boot up.
rsync for restore (in the Kickstart file)
echo "Restoring snapshot *TEST*"
rsync -avr --rsh="sshpass -p mypassword ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l root" 192.168.0.2:/.snapshots/alpha.0/remote-backup/* /
Exluding them is the key here. Followed this link https://www.serverpronto.com/kb/page.php?id=Backing+Up+and+Restore+Your+Server
So I spent a few weeks on this problem now. I've been trying to get CrashPlan running on a headless FreeNAS server. I have found lots a tutorial to do this. However the fact is that I'm missing the .un_info file on my FreeNAS server after installing CrashPlan.
I have searched the whole file system to try and find the elusive .ui_info file.
I've tried creating it manually with information copied from desktop PC but that does not help me resolve my CrashPlan Pro app connecting to the Crashplan server service on FreeNAS.
INFO:
FreeNAS 9.3 STABLE
Crashplan 3.6.3_1 Plugin
The crashplan remote access behaviour changed several times during the last updates, however with version 3.6.3_1 you should find the .ui_info file in
/var/lib/crashplan/.ui_info
Although the jail version is 3.6.3 it's possible that Crashplan updated itself, please check this with:
tail -f /usr/pbi/crashplan-amd64/share/crashplan/log/service.log.0
In the end you want your Crashplan to update itself anyway. If the update process produces an error related to bash, please run:
pkg update
pkg install bash
ln -siv /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash
And restart crashplan while checking the log output with the tail -f command from above:
service crashplan restart
If you finally reach a recent version (>4.4.1), its time to remotely connect to crashplan.
The only change on the server necessary for the easiest method without ssh tunnel is the serviceHost tag in /usr/pbi/crashplan-amd64/share/crashplan/conf/my.service.xml.
<serviceUIConfig>
<serviceHost>0.0.0.0</serviceHost>
Either do this everytime you want to connect, because the token will change after every crashplan restart or use my script from here (for OS X): https://gist.github.com/Phlogi/8654e353786ed1cf0858
Copy /var/lib/crashplan/.ui_info to the correct place on your desktop machine and edit the IP address at the end (to your servers address), for example:
4339,7f1d655f-*****,192.168.1.20
That's it, you can start crashplan on your remote machine and it will connect properly, there are no other changes neccessary. Latest crashplan (>4.4.1) will actually use the IP address from .ui_info.
Install JRE. You will need to add --no-check-certificate to the JRE wget line in the install.sh file
I want to create a blender-project on my Ubuntu 10.04 Laptop. But I don't want to render it on the same machine because I also have to work with it. I want to render it on my Linux-server over ssh and without any GUI.
So my question is: Is this possible and if yes, how? Can I do every single setting on my laptop and put the project on my server and run it? Or do I have to change a lot?
Here is the command line options for blender:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Render/Command_Line_Options
You can scp your file over, render it there using ssh, then scp it back. I am in the process of doing this right now, I will post an easy script if i finish it.