What does that even mean?

Well, this gives you a way to run systemd as pid 1, with all the trimmings, inside WSL 2. It does this by creating a pid namespace, the eponymous poor-man's-container "bottle", starting up systemd in there, and entering it, and providing some helpful shortcuts to do so.

If you want to try it, please read this entire document first, especially the BUGS section.

Note: it is only possible to run systemd (and thus genie ) under WSL 2; WSL 1 does not support the system calls required to do so. If you are running inside a distro configured as WSL 1, even if your system supports WSL 2, genie will fail to operate properly.

If there is a package available for your distribution, this is the recommended method of installing genie.

Dependent packages on Debian are daemonize, dbus, dotnet-runtime-5.0, gawk, libc6, libstdc++6, policykit-1, systemd, and systemd-container. For the most part, these are either already installed or in the distro and able to be installed automatically. You need debhelper and dotnet-sdk-5.0 (and optionally pbuilder) to build the Debian package, but not to simply build genie or install locally.

The chief exception is dotnet-runtime-5.0 , for which you will need to follow the installation instructions here:

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/

To install, add the wsl-translinux repository here by following the instructions here:

https://arkane-systems.github.io/wsl-transdebian/

Or here by following the instructions here:

https://packagecloud.io/arkane-systems/wsl-translinux

then install genie using the commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y systemd-genie

If you cannot install from the packagecloud.io repository, especially near the end of the month, it's probably because we're over our bandwidth quota. Please use the other repository, or download the package from the releases page and install it manually using dpkg -i . Alternatively, wait a few days and try again.

We now have a working PKGBUILD as of 1.32, thanks to @MartinodF in PR #95!

I don't currently have anywhere to build or host an Arch package, so you'll need to roll your own using this PKGBUILD. You'll also currently need to install the .NET Core runtime and sdk AUR packages manually first.

Debian is the "native" distribution for genie , for which read, "what the author uses". Specifically, Debian stretch+, with usrmerge installed. If you're using anything else, you may need to tweak the configuration file (see below) accordingly.

We're actively looking for maintainers for everything else. If you can use .deb packages (especially if your distro is a Debian derivative), the Debian package may work for you. Otherwise, manually installing from the .tar.gz is probably the best I can suggest.

I am unable to support distributions which there are not prebuilt packages for. I am actively seeking maintainers for these packages.

It is possible to build your own version of genie and install it locally. To do so, you will require build-essential and dotnet-sdk-5.0 in addition to the other dependencies, all of which must be installed manually.

After cloning the repository, run

sudo make local

This will build genie and install it under /usr/local .

That would be the file /etc/genie.ini. This defines the secure path (i.e., those directories in which genie will look for the utilities it depends on), and the explicit path to unshare(1), required by daemonize(1), and three settings controlling genie behavior. Normally, it looks like this:

[genie]
secure-path=/lib/systemd:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
unshare=/usr/bin/unshare
update-hostname=true
clone-path=false
clone-env=WSL_DISTRO_NAME,WSL_INTEROP,WSLENV
systemd-timeout=180

The secure-path setting should be generic enough to cover all but the weirdest Linux filesystem layouts, but on the off-chance that yours stores binaries somewhere particularly idiosyncratic, you can change it here. Meanwhile, the unshare setting is much more likely to be system-dependent; if you are getting errors running genie, please replace this with the output of which unshare before trying anything else.

The update-hostname setting controls whether or not genie updates the WSL hostname when creating the bottle. By default, genie updates a hostname foo to foo-wsl, to prevent hostname clashes between the host Windows machine and the WSL distribution, especially when communicating back and forth between the two. However, as recent Insider builds allow the hostname of the WSL distributions to be set in .wslconfig, this option has been provided to disable genie's intervention and keep the original hostname.

The clone-path setting controls whether the PATH outside the bottle should be cloned inside the bottle. This can be useful since the outside-bottle path may include system-specific directories not mentioned in secure-path, and since the outside-bottle path includes a transformed version of the host machine's Windows path.

If this is set to true, the inside-bottle path will be set to the secure-path combined with the outside-bottle path, with duplicate entries removed. It is set to false by default, for backwards compatibility.

The clone-env setting lists the environment variables which are copied from outside the bottle to inside the bottle. It defaults to only WSL_DISTRO_NAME, WSL_INTEROP, and WSLENV, needed for correct WSL operation, but any other environment variables which should be cloned can be added to this list. This replaces the former ability to copy additional environment variables by editing /usr/libexec/dumpwslenv.sh.

The systemd-timeout setting controls how long (the number of seconds) genie will wait when initializing the bottle for systemd to reach its "running" - i.e. fully operational, with all units required by the default target active - state. This defaults to 180 seconds.

genie:
  Handles transitions to the "bottle" namespace for systemd under WSL.

Usage:
  genie [options] [command]

Options:
  -v, --verbose <VERBOSE>    Display verbose progress messages
  --version                  Display version information

Commands:
  -i, --initialize           Initialize the bottle (if necessary) only.
  -s, --shell                Initialize the bottle (if necessary), and run a shell in it.
  -l, --login                Initialize the bottle (if necessary), and open a logon prompt in it.
  -c, --command <COMMAND>    Initialize the bottle (if necessary), and run the specified command in it.
  --shutdown, -u             Shut down systemd and exit the bottle.

So, it has four modes, all of which will set up the bottle and run systemd in it if it isn't already running for simplicity of use.

genie -i will set up the bottle - including changing the WSL hostname by suffixing -wsl, to distinguish it from the Windows host - run systemd, and then exit. This is intended for use if you want services running all the time in the background, or to preinitialize things so you needn't worry about startup time later on, and for this purpose is ideally run from Task Scheduler on logon.

genie -s runs your login shell inside the bottle; basically, Windows-side, wsl genie -s is your substitute for just wsl to get started, or for the shortcut you get to start a shell in the distro. It follows login semantics, and as such does not preserve the current working directory.

genie -l opens a login session within the bottle. This permits you to log in to the WSL distribution as any user. The login prompt will return when you log out; to terminate the session, press ^] three times within one second. It follows login semantics, and as such does not preserve the current working directory.

genie -c [command] runs command inside the bottle, then exits. The return code is the return code of the command. It follows sudo semantics, and so does preserve the cwd.

Meanwhile, genie -u , run from outside the bottle, will shut down systemd cleanly and exit the bottle. This uses the systemctl poweroff command to simulate a normal Linux system shutting down. It is suggested that this be used before shutting down Windows or restarting the Linux distribution to ensure a clean shutdown of systemd services.

While not compulsory, it is recommended that you shut down and restart the WSL distro before using genie again after you have used genie -u. See BUGS, below, for more details.

If genie (1.31+) seems to be blocked at the

"Waiting for systemd...!!!!!"

stage, this is because of the new feature in 1.31 that waits for all systemd services/units to have started up before continuing, to ensure that they have started before you try and do anything that might require them. (I.e., it waits for the point at which a normal Linux system would have given you a login prompt.) It does this by waiting for systemd to reach the "running" state.

If it appears to have blocked, wait until the timeout (by default, 180 seconds) and run systemctl status. The usual cause of this problem is that one or more systemd units are not starting properly, in which case the systemd state shown will be "degraded", or another state other than "running". If this is the case, fixing or disabling those units such that systemd can start properly will also allow genie to start properly.

Once you have this up and running, I suggest disabling via systemctl the getty@tty1 service (since logging on and using WSL is done via ptsen, not ttys).

Further tips on usage from other genie users can be found on the wiki for this repo.

1. It is considerably clunkier than I'd like it to be, inasmuch as you have to invoke genie every time to get inside the bottle, either manually (replacing, for example, wsl [command] with wsl genie -c [command]), or by using your own shortcut in place of the one WSL gives you for the distro, using which will put you outside the bottle. Pull requests, etc.

But see also RunInGenie!

2. genie is not idempotent; i.e., it is possible that changes made by genie or by systemd inside the bottle will not be perfectly reverted when the genie bottle is shut down with genie -u . As such, it is recommended that you terminate the entire wsl session with wsl -t or wsl --shutdown in between stopping and restarting the bottle, or errors may occur.