In an attempt to get some AMD iGPU accelerated apps to run via Ubuntu LTS on WSL2, I had rebuild my Ubuntu LTS “VM” under WSL2.

• I had to first remove the existing Ubuntu LTS (named “UbuntuLTS”): wsl --unregister UbuntuLTS

WARNING: Although multiple sources state that the source .vhdx file does not get deleted, it actually does get deleted for me! 🙄

• I re-downloaded the .wsl file directly from Ubuntu, then installed the VM manually:

wsl --install --from-file "ubuntu-24.04.4-wsl-amd64.wsl" --name UbuntuLTS --location "D:\WSL\UbuntuLTS" --no-launch

Note that if you have Docker already installed, the default “distro” WSL2 may have been set to Docker’s docker-desktop:

• set the correct default: wsl --set-default UbuntuLTS

• run wsl.exe and it will launch into the newly created distribution, set a new (default) user and password… and ignore the stupid <3>WSL (299 - Relay) ERROR: operator():579: getpwuid(1000) failed error 🙄
  • NOTE: the error will “go away” after a wsl --shutdown and restart…
    
    
    

• turn on the integration in Docker again…  and watch errors pop up…
  An error occurred while running the command. DockerDesktop/Wsl/ExecError: c:\windows\system32\wsl.exe -d -e sh -c cat - > ~/.docker/config.json: exit status 1 (stderr: , wslErrorCode: DockerDesktop/Wsl/ExecError)

• turns out Docker 4.48 doesn’t play nice with the newer .wsl repacked distributions (I previously wsl --import‘d from a cloud image i.e. wsl
--import UbuntuLTS --location D:\WSL\UbuntuLTS ubuntu-noble-wsl-amd64-wsl.rootfs.tar.gz
--version 2)…

• deleting/unregistering the distro, upgrading Docker (to 4.70) and re-creating the distribution went smoothly this time around…