Wsl Alpine

Brief documentation of an attempt I made of importing latest at the time AlpineLinux into WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

I started with alpine-minirootfs-3.18.0-x86_64.tar.gz found at https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/releases/x86_64/

Or at one of their mirrors.

Installing AlpineLinux to WSL

curl -O https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/releases/x86_64/alpine-minirootfs-3.18.0-x86_64.tar.gz
wsl --import Alpine318 C:\ProgramData\WSLDistroStorage\alpine318 alpine-minirootfs-3.18.0-x86_64.tar.gz
wsl -d Alpine318

Add user account and make default

Create a user account and then set the default user to that account, rather than root.

See Alpine’s documentation for Setting up a new user for a more detailed account what this is starting to do.

adduser donno
# Follow the onscreen prompts.

Next set-up auto-login to that account for WSL:

vi /etc/wsl.conf

Within the file add the following replacing donno for the username you used above.

[user]
default=donno

See this superuser post for more details and alternative methods.

As a reminder for vi use, press escape if you need to stop the current command then :wq! (for save, quit and no confirmation).

For this to take effect the distro needs to be restarted: wsl --terminate Alpine38 then when you next launch it you will be logged in as the user configured.

Once logged in type whoami as AlpineLinux’s default prompt doesn’t include the current username.

Bonus tidbit

The filesystem of the WSL distribution can be accessed through Windows Explorer via: \\wsl.localhost\Alpine318, that is to say via \\wsl.localhost\<name> provided the distribution is running.

The IP address of the host can be queried with:

ip route show | grep -i default | awk '{ print $3}'

This snippet is from the WSL Networking page.

ALpine 3.22 update

Differences

Created it on a different drive
Created it with a fixed size disk image.

curl -LO https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.22/releases/x86_64/alpine-minirootfs-3.22.0-x86_64.tar.gz
wsl --install --fixed-vhd --vhd-size 10G --location D:\vms\wsl\alpine322 --name "Alpine 3.22" --from-file alpine-minirootfs-3.22.0-x86_64.tar.gz

dh -h
/dev/sdf                  9.7G      8.7M      9.2G   0% /

# I installed the following packages:
apk add openrc openrc-user nano