Microsoft Begins Rolling Out Windows Subsystem For Linux 2

[Xaero_Vincent]

I'll stick to running Windows in VMs on Linux hosts.

Headless KVM or VMware Linux host paired with a trial version Windows 10 Enterprise guest and FreeRDP + Remote App is where it's at. Seamless Windows application windows on the Linux desktop. Lutris+Wine Staging or Proton for Windows gaming on Linux.

This is what I mean. A headless VM is powering this in the background on the same machine and I made a simple script to launch remoteapp programs from GNOME. Better than WSL IMO.

[k1e0x]

Microsoft is going to adopt Linux as operating system.

...adopt it as a run time layer that you use on Windows negating anyone a reason to actually want to use Linux. Go read Microsofts history.. this is an old play.

And this is pointless anyhow.. don't pass your GPU via Hyper-V, do it with KVM (or Bhyve)

Microsoft Linux ME ('Millennial' Edition) *spits on the ground*

[DrYak]

Microsoft is going to adopt Linux as operating system.

By the time WSL 3 is out, Windows 10 will be just a theme/skin running on top of a Linux kernel host. :-P

[oiaohm]

So there is some "magic" (hopefully not the buggy 9p or samba mount) going on to have this special VHD root-filesystem shared for WSL2 and Win10. I just wonder how exactly this VHD is actually shared for the linux VM and Win10 point of view?
This should mean sqlite+wal should work on this VHD, since its a normal ext4 FS from the VM/Docker daemon viewpoint..

The video on WSL2 says it 9p both ways.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-how-wsl-allows-windows-to-access-linux-files/

So 9p to access Linux ext4 VHD from Windows and 9p for Linux to access windows partitions.

So yes Linux kernel running 9p server for windows to access files contained inside the VHD. Windows will also have its own 9p server for sharing windows drivers. Really in a lot of ways this makes sense only 1 OS can control locks on a local file system at a time.

Windows with functional 9p support will make it a lot better OS for me to place in a virtual machine.

Only magic will be if Microsoft makes a functional file system.

https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/

Most likely going to have to wait for WSL3 for the virtio-fs magic. Basically this WSL2 will be virtio-9p with may of the 9p bugs fixed on the windows side. virtio-9p other than lacking performance with Linux to Linux hypervisor setups have been highly stable and dependable.

[andy22]

Basically this WSL2 will be virtio-9p with may of the 9p bugs fixed on the windows side.

Yeah was guessing this myself also, since thats what they use for docker-LCOW. The problem is 9p still lacks essential features, so its a try&error approach per container and getting any changelog on 9p compatibility changes is none existent. I spend the last 2 years trying to run my failing containers/examples with latest Win10/Docker-LCOW over and over every 6 months.... the process is really frustrating and 4 out of 5 cases still fail.

So i have very little confidence that WSL2+9p will work any better, this means i need to keep the problematic mounts inside the VHD/root, while using the 9p mounts as simple network drive for just basic file i/o. At least i have this option now with WSL2, since docker-lcow always uses 9p.

I still think it will work better than my VM+Docker, since its managed by WSL2 and i can drop all the ssh stuff for doing basic config changes or backups. I mainly need to test how WSL2-9p performs against my reverse samba4 server, that has a physical disk (ext4) mounted inside my VM.

[jpg44]

Dont let it all fool you. It doesnt change the fact that Microsoft Windows is still an evil closed source OS. The source code is at best shared with a select few that Microsoft likes, plus you have to sign nasty NDAs that you cant talk about what you see. Overall, its just proprietary hell.

[oiaohm]

So i have very little confidence that WSL2+9p will work any better, this means i need to keep the problematic mounts inside the VHD/root, while using the 9p mounts as simple network drive for just basic file i/o. At least i have this option now with WSL2, since docker-lcow always uses 9p..

Windows Improved 9p support will improve docker-lcow as well. Remember WSL2 developers have promised to in fact work on fixing up Windows 9p support.

My main interest is improve 9p. I run windows in a virtual machine under Linux. So my Linux VM can use virtio-fs that gives me DAX and other features that cannot be done over 9p or samba.

WSL2 is still a generation or two behind what us using native Linux do. Windows has equally the same problems in VM instances where you are forced to samba instead of virtio-9p or virtio-fs.

[andy22]

Windows Improved 9p support will improve docker-lcow as well.

I could not find any new change-logs regarding 9p and WSL2, so the "latest" information i have is this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vir...rs#bind-mounts

There the major issues are:

These operations are not currently working for bind-mounted volumes:

• XAttrCreate
• Lock
• Getlock
• INotify

There are also a few that are not fully implemented:

• Open – Only ReadWrite, WriteOnly, and ReadOnly flags are implemented

I also retested my containers a few days ago with all the latest master stuff (docker, lcow, 9p), yet still get i/o errors because of 9p.

Docker version master-dockerproject-2019-06-05, build c02f389c
Kernel Version: 10.0 18362 (18362.1.amd64fre.19h1_release.190318-1202)
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro Version 1903 (OS Build 18362.145)
4.19.27-linuxkit

So unless WSL2 adds support for those i/o operations, the 9P mounts are useless for most of my containers.

[oiaohm]

I could not find any new change-logs regarding 9p and WSL2, so the "latest" information i have is this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vir...rs#bind-mounts

There the major issues are:

• MkNod
• XAttrWalk
• XAttrCreate
• Lock
• Getlock
• Auth
• Flush
• INotify

Out of this list of major issues. Only 2 are not fixed in the Linux version of 9p. That is MkNod and INotify. Now how to handle INotify on 9p file systems that is another problem.

So if Microsoft does fix up their 9p support things should improve a lot for the

So unless WSL2 adds support for those i/o operations, the 9P mounts are useless for most of my containers.

The fact that INotify and MkNod don't work in Linux to Linux 9p usage those are Linux side 9p issues. The other are Microsoft limited implementation of 9P. Items like XAttr and locks in 9p on NTFS drives in the questions at the end of the WSL2 details video they did mention they are going to work on them.

Basically Linux to Linux 9p mounts are not as bad as you have been having under windows. Ok they are not as good as they could be under Linux missing INotify is a serous pain in the tail.

[andy22]

So if Microsoft does fix up their 9p support things should improve a lot for the

Sure, i understand that doing locks via 9p on ntfs is kinda hard, yet on most lcow or even the WSL2 videos they "promise" working Docker and how cool and easy all "should" be, yet lcow/wsl2 cant run a simple sqlite/wal database of 9p, which is used by a lot of containers. The other problem is that on many containers all "seem" to work fine with lcow-9p, until some obscure i/o error corrupts some files and stuff just stops working. Its a painful learning process if you have no clue how docker mounts actually work on lcow and what works and what doesn't. I think MS is doing a bad job communicating this major issue, which renders lcow/wsl2 useless for many scenarios.