wsl-butler

scripts to maintain your wsl installation (e.g., backup and restore, create a portable instance)

initial setup

install a Linux distribution of your choice and customize it, this distribution will be the base for our future deployments

• optional step (elevated shell)

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all

• install WSL via winget (elevated shell)

winget install -s msstore 'Windows Subsystem for Linux Preview'

• install Distri of your choice, e.g. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

winget search -s msstore "Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"

install wsl-butler

• download .ps1 files from this repository

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/the-cognitiveservices-ninja/wsl-butler/main/create.ps1 -OutFile .\create.ps1
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/the-cognitiveservices-ninja/wsl-butler/main/backup.ps1 -OutFile .\backup.ps1

• Create a folder WindowsSubsystemLinux and two subfolders in your user-folder

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/the-cognitiveservices-ninja/wsl-butler/main/mkwsldir.ps1 -OutFile .\mkwsldir.ps1; .\mkwsldir.ps1

folder instances will hold your WSL installations, folder images your backups

• create an image of your Linux distro

wsl -l -v
.\backup.ps1

Hint: you can pass the instance to backup as a commandline parameter

• remove running wsl instance

wsl -l -v
wsl --terminate <running instance>
wsl --unregister <running instance>

• install backup created before

.\create.ps1

Hint: you can pass FileDate and Instance name as commandline parameters

• To make an instance the default one

wsl -s <descriptive name>

don´t forget to backup frequently

USB-storage

use scripts with the appendix _usb. to create a instance from an backup stored on a thumb drive or
to create a backup on a thumb drive.
Directory structure is

root
\WindowsSubsystemLinux\
\WindowsSubsystemLinux\images

Tips & Hints

defaultuser missing

• get uid

wsl -d Ubuntu-20.04 -u holger -e id -u

• store uid as default user

Get-ItemProperty Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss\*\ DistributionName | Where-Object -Property DistributionName -eq Ubuntu-20.04 | Set-ItemProperty -Name DefaultUid -Value 1000

the_ultimate_ thumb drive

a azure storage account with a fileshare