Dev Note: Tips of developing with WSL

Questions

  • Ubuntu running under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) popped up error about inefficient memory in virtual disk
  • I have to expand the memory of virtual disk

Source: How to manage WSL disk space | Microsoft Learn

Procedure

  1. Open Windows Command Prompt with admin privileges and then open the diskpart command

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    diskpart

  2. Wait for diskpart awake, using Select vdisk to specify the path to disk, but most of the time, the path to VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is unknown, so I have to use other prompt to find it.

    Command Prompt
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    (Get-ChildItem -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss | Where-Object { $_.GetValue("DistributionName") -eq 'distribution-name'
    • However, what is distribution name? -> preciously, it means the name of distro of Linux OS under your subsystem, such as Ubuntu, Arch Linux, et al. So I use following code to find out the name of my distro:
    Command Prompt
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    wsl -l -v

    Outputs are following:

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    NAME            STATE           VERSION
    * Ubuntu-22.04    Stopped         2
    • It is Ubuntu-22.04. After I replaced it into 'distribution-name', got the path.
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    (Get-ChildItem -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss | Where-Object { $_.GetValue("DistributionName") -eq 'Ubuntu-22.04'

    Outputs are following:

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    C:\Users\LI\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu22.04LTS_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx
    • Finally, I could use the prompt to select the virtual disk as:
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    Select vdisk file = "C:\Users\LI\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu22.04LTS_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx"

  3. Check the detail of virtual disk with prompt:

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    detail vdisk

    Got infos as outputs:

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    Vendor ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} (Unknown)
    State: Added
    Virtual size:  256 GB
    Physical size:  240 GB
    Filename:     C:\Users\LI\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu22.04LTS_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx
    Is Child: No
    Parent Filename:
    Associated disk#: Not found.

    → Well, 256 GB is not enough, I have already used 95% of them.

  4. Expand the size of the virtual disk and exit with the following prompts:
    Notes: the units of the disk size is MB, so I enlarged the size of virtual disk 100% of the original

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    expand vdisk maximum=512000
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    exit

  5. Not the end. I have to let the subsystem recognize the renewed disk size, after opened the wsl and activate Ubuntu, prompt:

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    sudo mount -t devtmpfs none /dev mount | grep ext4

    and, with resize2fs (specify the correct path: /dev/sdc as my case, and don’t forget the unit symbol M)

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    sudo resize2fs /dev/sdc 512000M

  6. Check if it works, with df:
    ![[Pasted image 20230713142250.png]]

⇾ Congratulation.

#### SOLVED ####

Keywords:
#dev_note #wsl #linux #virtual_disk