VSCode Remote: Connect to WSL2 from another machine

remote-wsl.md

VSCode Remote: Connect to WSL2 from another machine

Do you want to do remote development on your WSL2 container in Visual Studio Code? Read this.

Proxy jump method

1. On the host set up OpenSSH for Windows
2. Run wsl --update to make sure you are running the latest WSL
3. Open WSL and install another SSH server inside WSL with sudo apt-get install openssh-server
4. Now run sudo systemctl enable --now ssh to automatically start ssh when WSL starts.
5. On the remote machine run ssh -J windows_user@windows_ip wsl_user@localhost to see if the proxy jump will work

If you see the bash prompt it works. You can add it to the ~/.ssh/config file on the remote machine.

Host remote-wsl
  HostName localhost
  User wsl_user
  ProxyJump windows_user@windows_ip
  StrictHostKeyChecking no

Now connect with ssh remote-wsl.

Credit

ajihyf's comment

Default shell method

Change your OpenSSH shell

SSH to your Windows host (SSH Server must be installed in Windows Features)

ssh user@windowshost

Start Powershell

powershell

Run this command to switch SSH from CMD to WSL

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\OpenSSH" -Name DefaultShell -Value "C:\WINDOWS\System32\bash.exe" -PropertyType String -Force

Test

ssh user@windowshost

You should now see WSL2 instead of CMD

Connect from VSCode

At this point you can connect to your Win10 host with Remote SSH in VSCode with your Windows username and pw. But you'll actually start and connect to WSL2.

1. Install the Remote - SSH extension
2. Add a new SSH target and connect with your Windows host, username and password (you will automatically log in as the Linux user)

Credit

The workaround was inspired by: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/the-easy-way-how-to-ssh-into-bash-and-wsl2-on-windows-10-from-an-external-machine

Thanks, I nevertheless think it's important to note easy solutions when they exist that involve VSCode considering that the topic of the Gist is wrt VSCode. I'm personally aware of the more generic situations but don't use them due to the effort.

IT in my company block vscode remote tunnel (by blocking all the msft remote tunnel servers) saying it evades proxy setting. Guess it is the same for many others so the generic way is still very relevant even for vscode

Ironically, I've ended up mainly using the ProxyJump method today as well, because I have been making extensive use of an extension that launches a server and the extension on the client VSCode instance listens to localhost on the client environment. This works alright when

1. The Remote-SSH extension is in use, connected to within WSL and ports are forwarded from WSL through the SSH connection, managed by the extension.
2. The WSL extension is in use, and the ports are forwarded by WSL to the Windows host (despite showing stuff in the Ports pane, the WSL extension actually does not do any forwarding on its own).

But an issue is encountered when WSL-extension-in-Remote-SSH-extension (or Remote-Tunnels) is used, in which case

• The server residing in WSL is exposed to the host Windows WSL automatically.
• Requests made either to localhost on the client environment, or (iirc) to localhost on the host environment seem to fail to reach the WSL environment intermittently. This was observed by amateurish wireshark monitoring on all three environments. There seems to be a pattern that may be reproducible, but I did not pursue this further.