The WSL CLI window disappears directly after it has opened -- how to fix that?

Question

I use Docker and WSL2 with an Ubuntu 20.04 distro on Windows 10.

For running programs in linux and getting the GUI in Windows I installed GWSL. Due to some troubles with it I uninstalled it and Ubuntu to set up all that again from scratch and resolve the issues.

Before I could start the WSL CLI window by opening the C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe (either via the shortcut in the Windows Start or from the CMD / Power Shell / Git Bash). Now, when I start, the WSL command line window opens for less than a second and immediately disappears again.

What might cause this behavior and how to fix it?

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Additional infotmation

> wsl -l -v
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* docker-desktop-data    Running         2
  Ubuntu                 Running         2
  docker-desktop         Running         2

Answer 1

Given your wsl -l -v output, it looks like the docker-desktop-data instance got set as the default when you uninstalled Ubuntu. That's not actually a bootable instance, since it has no /init in it.

That hopefully will explain why the wsl command is exiting. Just running wsl.exe (from PowerShell, CMD, or the Start Menu) is attempting to launch docker-desktop-data and then immediately exits.

You should be able to fix it by executing wsl --set-default Ubuntu from PowerShell or CMD. If not, we can dig deeper.

Answer 2

I had the same problem, in my case, I didn't have the Ubuntu distribution.

So, I installed it, using this command:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

Then I used the following command to set the Ubuntu distribution as default:

wsl --set-default Ubuntu

Other useful commands:

# To list all installed distributions
wsl --list --verbose
wsl -l -v

# To see the available distributions to install
wls --list --online