Windows Subsystem for Linux

Last modified on March 24, 2023

The usage of StrongDM CLI with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is not supported. However, WSL1 often works well with StrongDM and WSL2 can often be made to work via manual configuration.

You can manually configure your /etc/wsl.conf to run systemd each time WSL starts, which will cause sdm to start:

[boot]
systemd=true

If your version of WSL is not up to date, or not the Windows Store version, systemd may not run on WSL. If this is the case, you can also try configuring sdm start to run directly:

[boot]
  command="/etc/init.d/sdm start"

Additionally, when setting up WSL2, if you want to be able to connect to anything within WSL2 from Windows, you can echo "export SDM_DOCKERIZED=true" >> ~/.bashrc" so that SDM_DOCKERIZED=true is set any time the WSL2 instance is restarted.

These two adjustments may help with WSL2, but currently no version of WSL is officially supported.