Access File System of a WSL as a seperate Drive - windows-subsystem-for-linux

I have installed Ubuntu 20.04 from Microsoft Store as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and I need to access the system files of it from Windows Explorer and access it as a separate Partition (as C:,D:).
Anyone know how to do this? Thanks.

I think what you are searching for is Linux File System. On WSL, as you have installed Ubuntu, You Can find it in,
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows\LocalState\rootfs

Related

Mount VHDX within WSL Ubuntu 18.04 to edit Linux files

I'm looking to change a process (which currently is an elevated PowerShell script running in Windows 10, and I want to keep it close to that) I have that currently uses Paragon Linux Filesystem for Windows tool. While it does work, it doesn't work consistently. What I'd like to do instead is to use WSL on Windows 10, 1909 currently (will go to 2004 when available), to mount a VHDX which contains to partitions, /dev/sda1 for /boot, and /dev/sda2 another for an Linux LVM. The OS within this VHDX is CentOS 7.5, and the filesystem I want to modify is formatted in ext4. I need to edit some files within a logical volume within the group.
Currently, I'm running into an issue where qemu-nbd doesn't help, as there doesn't appear to be an NBD kernel mode driver provided by the Microsoft Linux kernel in Ubuntu 18.04 image from the Windows Store. I've tried guestfish (using guestmount), but it is unable to find an operating system and fails to mount any of the volumes.
Is this possible? Am I going down the wrong path, and is this not possible?
As I understand your question...
Seems to me that you want to offline access a .vhdx containing Linux
using powershell to manipulate some files...
(I think the issue here is ext4 and file rights)
1. Mount the .vhdx you want to '''work''' in a linux virtual machine as second disk
2. Install Powershell 7 in linux VM
3. Configure Powershell remote in the Linux VM (via SSH)
4. Access the Linux VM from Windows Powershell 7 and execute your scripts.
there are other ways using VMs+NBD or using WSL and mounted
drives... but this seems to be the most practical end efficient!
as you for sure know you can start/stop the VMs from Powershell

Windows Desktop doesn't show up on WSL

I just recently set up WSL with Ubuntu 18.04 on my new windows computer. I know that to access my windows files from the linux side, the C:\ drive is mapped to /mnt/c. When I try to cd to /mnt/c/Users/malik22/Desktop, however, I get a No such file or directory error. I access my window Downloads, Documents, etc. just fine from the linux side, but for some reason Desktop seems to be the only one not present.
I've been using WSL for over a year now on my old computer and have never run into this issue. Any ideas?
If your Desktop is backed up in your OneDrive it won't show up in your user directory.
You can either create a symbolic link as mentioned below by #raghav-malik or else choose to not back up your Desktop (you can instead back up your Documents directory).

Accessing files without installing Dropbox from Linux OS installed parellelly in Windows7

I have installed Dropbox in Windows 7. Also, installed Ubuntu Linux 14.04 in parallel. Through online login to Dropbox account allows access to files in Dropbox. However, to work with the files in Dropbox I have to install Dropbox in Linux also. This require additional space in the same PC. So, is it possible to access and work with files in Dropbox#Windows7 without installing Dropbox in Ubuntu (which is installed in the same PC parelelly)?.
You can access windows disks in linux, you just need to map it correctly. Then you can do whatever you want with files. But dropbox magic will not work until you load windows again.
Only when you bootup from windows again, since it is dropbox app that does syncing. What you may do is to deploy dropbox on both windows and linux, but point them to the same data folder. Still there could be some problems with text files, as windows and linux are not treating line endings the same way. So if a file was synchronized in windows, it will have windows endings, and vice-versa.
Maybe you could configure a remote filesystem on a USB-Stick so both your systems can access on it and you have a directory where dropbox stores the files.
Look here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Idea-Portable-Dropbox-folder-on-flash-drive/idi-p/122804

Dropbox Selective Sync Config File

I have dual boot - Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 16.04. I use Dropbox on both systems. I use the same folder using ubuntu fstab.
Which file in Windows AppData contains Selective Sync config? I want to symlink it to Ubuntu. Is it possible?

Possible to run a site on Windows/Mac/*nix with USB using XAMPP

it seems that it's possible to run a web server on a USB stick using XAMPP, but would this work on Windows, Mac and Linux? I want to run a PHP/MySQL demo site which can be used cross platform. Any advice appreciated!
XAMPP is a windows compiled application
Unless you use an emulator you might struggle to get it working on linux or mac
Consider a diffrent portable webserver for each OS
XAMPP is a cross platform (hence the 'X'), Apache MySQL PHP and Perl application. While the application runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, each installation is a different set of binary files for the given platform. While there is a Windows version that can run a from a relative path on a USB stick; no such version exists for Mac or Linux at this time. The installation location for the later operating systems must be on the system's hard drive at /Applications/XAMPP on Mac.