Installing Arch Linux in WSL2

archlinux-wsl2.md

Start a temporary Linux system.

Create a temporary directory.

$ tempdir="/tmp/archlinux_$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M)"
$ mkdir $tempdir

Download, unpack the latest archlinux-bootstrap archive to the temporary directory, stripping the top level directory, packs it to a new ~/root.tar.gz archive and removes the temporary directory.

$ curl https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/archlinux/iso/latest/archlinux-bootstrap-x86_64.tar.gz | sudo tar -xvz --strip-components=1 -C $tempdir && sudo tar -cvf - -C $tempdir . --remove-files > ~/root.tar.gz

Move the archive to your Windows machine (example from a WSL instance).

$ mv ~/root.tar.gz /mnt/c/Users/<username>/

You can now close the temporary Linux system and open a Powershell sessions (as your user).

Create a directory for where to store the virtual disk (VHD) and import the archive to WSL and create a new distribution.

> mkdir wsl
> wsl --import ArchLinux wsl root.tar.gz

Start the imported ArchLinux distribution in WSL.

> wsl -d ArchLinux

Generate locales (example uses en_US).

$ sed -i 's:#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8:en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8:g' /etc/locale.gen
$ locale-gen
$ echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 >> /etc/locale.conf
$ echo LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 >> /etc/locale.conf

Initialize Arch keyring.

$ pacman-key --init
$ pacman-key --populate archlinux

Active Pacman mirrors (replace Sweden with your country).

$ awk -i inplace '/## Sweden/{p=1}/^ *$/{p=0}p{sub("#","")}p' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install base packages and attempt to upgrade any installed packages.

$ pacman -Syyu base base-devel

Set sane WSL config options.

$ cat <<EOF >/etc/wsl.conf
[boot]
systemd=true

[interop]
appendWindowsPath=false
EOF

Restart the WSL session.

> wsl --shutdown -d ArchLinux

Wait for ~8 seconds and start a new WSL session.

> wsl -d ArchLinux

Enjoy your ArchLinux installation!