AlpineWSL-OOBE

What's this?

Enhance your alpine experience, for WSL users.

Get started

Install alpine with this helper application.
Execute oobe.sh or setup manually.

OOBE explained

Repository

Note

If you prefer stable release, then replace all edge with latest-stable, you can skip this section to avoid unexpected release upgrades.

cat <<APK > /etc/apk/repositories
https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community
https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
APK
apk upgrade -Ua

Some fix

These solutions are useful in most situations, but you are the boos.

# Fix "clear" in WindowsTerminal
apk add ncurses

# Fix "bash" in Windows side
apk add bash shadow
chsh -s /bin/bash

# VSCode Server runtime
apk add libstdc++

# Boot OpenRC services
cat <<ORC > /etc/wsl.conf
[boot]
command = "/sbin/openrc sysinit && /sbin/openrc boot && /sbin/openrc default"
ORC

Note

Restart WSL to apply the changes.

Else

• For some scripts complain about

  grep: unrecognized option: P
  

  Install a full-featured grep by:

  apk add grep
  

  to fix the problem.
• Since OpenRC functional, we can use docker for further development now:

  apk add docker docker-cli-compose
  rc-update add docker default
  

  [!NOTE] If daemon failed to startup with system, try this:

  cat <<ENI > /etc/network/interfaces
  auto lo
  iface lo inet loopback
  iface lo inet6 loopback
  ENI
  

Mass-Storage and UVCVideo support

The WSL kernel has builtin USB/IP support but no actually USB drivers provided by default, so let's do this. You can run kernel.sh to automatically build a kernel, or again, step by step.

Prepare

Make sure you have /mnt/c/ in your alpine WSL, if it doesn't, simply start a PowerShell window and then type bash to mount the C: volume, or wsl if you didn't install bash.

Note

The sh will drop you into a Windows sh environment, not the WSL one.

cd ~/
TAGVERNUM=$(uname -r | sed -r "s/-.+\+?//g")
TAGVER=linux-msft-wsl-${TAGVERNUM}
WIN_USERPROFILE=$(powershell.exe '$env:USERPROFILE' | sed -r 's#\r##g')
WSL_USERPROFILE=$(wslpath -u "$WIN_USERPROFILE")

Then we clone the kernel source and copy the current kernel config

rm -rf *-microsoft-standard
git clone --depth 1 -b ${TAGVER} \
    https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.git \
    ${TAGVERNUM}-microsoft-standard
cd ${TAGVERNUM}-microsoft-standard

cp /proc/config.gz config.gz \
    && gunzip config.gz \
    && mv config .config

Create a one-time ubuntu docker

docker run -itd --rm --name ub \
    -w /wsl \
    -v "${PWD}:/wsl" \
    ubuntu /bin/bash

docker exec ub apt update
docker exec ub apt install -y build-essential flex bison \
    libgtk-3-dev libelf-dev libncurses-dev autoconf \
    libudev-dev libtool zip unzip v4l-utils libssl-dev \
    python3-pip cmake git iputils-ping net-tools dwarves \
    guvcview python-is-python3 bc
docker exec -it ub make menuconfig

Configure

To enable USB Mass-Storage amd UVCVideo support, go:

    Device Drivers  --->
    <*> Multimedia support  --->
         Media drivers  --->
             [*] Media USB Adapters  --->
                 <*>   USB Video Class (UVC)
    [*] USB support  --->
        <*>   USB Mass Storage support

Build and install

docker exec ub make -j$(nproc) KCONFIG_CONFIG=.config
docker exec ub make modules -j$(nproc) KCONFIG_CONFIG=.config

Now we can terminate the docker, and install kernel modules

docker stop ub
make modules_install -j$(nproc)

Finally, update the kernel and the .wslconfig file to %USERPROFILE%:

rm -f ${WSL_USERPROFILE}/vmlinux
cp ./vmlinux $WSL_USERPROFILE/
cat <<WSL > ${WSL_USERPROFILE}/.wslconfig
[wsl2]
kernel=${WIN_USERPROFILE}\vmlinux
WSL
sed -i 's#\\#\\\\#g' ${WSL_USERPROFILE}/.wslconfig
wsl.exe --shutdown

Note

if you modified .wslconfig previously, make sure to make a backup and skip this section, then edit the file manually.

Credits

• wsl2_linux_kernel_usbcam_enable_conf: Provide instructions to build a custom WSL kernel.
• WSL2でUSBデバイスを扱えるようになっていました: Find the make menuconfig entry to enable uvcvideo support.