[0.9.1] Windows 10 WSL2 installation not detected

Bug description

Can’t install Podman through the Podman Desktop Dashboard because it is not recognizing my WSL2 installation.

Operating system

Windows 10 Pro

Version

0.9.1

Steps to reproduce

This version of windows requires a manual installation of the wsl2 kernel: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual

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I’ve already own an OpenSuse Tumbleweed configured with version 2 before:

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Install the Podman Desktop application then, on the Dashboard, try to install Podman:

Relevant log output

No response

Additional context

This version of wsl2 does not support newer commands as wsl --status:

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wsl --install is not a valid command either:

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My spec: Intel® Core™ i7-10510U CPU @ 1.80GHz 2.30 GHz 16,0 GB RAM Windows 10 Pro 20H2 build 19042.985

Ps.: not on Windows Insiders Program

[albertowd]

@benoitf So, the issue is that the Windows Feature “Windows Subsystem for Linux” is not installed? Please verify using Start and search for

“Turn Windows Features on or off”

Which will show the following dialog:

Can you see the setting for “Windows Subsystem for Linux” ? If you do not see the checkbox, see if you can install this. This action needs administrative privileges, but should work also for users with local administrator rights. if you do not have this, it is not something we can resolve.

Tried to install, but failed as I don’t have administration rights on this machine. If this is a requirement, it could be checked in the Desktop application as well.

This would need to be checked as a pre-requisite from the provider before starting the install process.

Yep, the Windows Subsystem for Linux is installed and the Virtual Machine Platform as well (both required to run WSL2):

As I showed in the issue form, I’ve already have a fully functional WSL2 installation of OpenSuse Tumbleweed. This is how I use Podman on my machine before tried the Podman Desktop application. Everything works besides the deployment probes (requires systemd on the instance to check liveness and so on…)

Again, if I can help to solve this issue, be my guest!

IMPORTANT I found only one way to check if there is a valid Windows 10 WSL2 installation without admin rights:

• setting the default version and checking for errors. As the Windows 10 CLI does not give us much choice, does not list online distros or only show us the version of already installed distros, my only clue of whats available on the installation was to try setting the version 2 as default value:

I hope it helps you guys!

[albertowd]

Note: so the administrator helped to install the necessary components, right?

That’s precise, I’ve asked for the administration to install the WSL requirements and the new WSL2 kernel so I could install any container engine that I wanted as a normal user.

I’ll try to see what can be done.

Thanks!