How to remove the Win10’s PATH from WSL

by

For Windows builds HIGHER than 17713:

WSL uses the file /etc/wsl.conf inside each Linux VM’s filesystem to configure its behavior. Add the following configuration settings (explained here) to /etc/wsl.conf, creating that file if necessary:

[interop]
appendWindowsPath = false

Note that appendWindowsPath must be under [interop] for this to work. You may need to shutdown the current instance of WSL with wsl --shutdown or wsl -t <Distribution> for changes to take effect. You could also add the option enabled = false, also under the [interop] section, to disable the ability to launch Windows binaries from inside WSL.

For Windows builds LOWER than 17713:

WSL uses WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS Enumeration to configure its behavior. Here is the code snippet from wslapi.h header file.

/* Flags specifying WSL behavior */
typedef enum
{
  WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_NONE                  = 0x0,
  WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_INTEROP        = 0x1,
  WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_APPEND_NT_PATH        = 0x2,
  WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_DRIVE_MOUNTING = 0x4
} WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS;
        
#define WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_VALID (WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_INTEROP | WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_APPEND_NT_PATH | WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_DRIVE_MOUNTING)
#define WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_DEFAULT (WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_INTEROP | WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_APPEND_NT_PATH | WSL_DISTRIBUTION_FLAGS_ENABLE_DRIVE_MOUNTING)

At first launch, WSL uses the default flag = 0x7 (i.e. 0+1+2+4). If that flag = 0x5 (i.e. 0+1+4), the Windows NT path will not appended in the $PATH environment variable. To find that flag’s registry value, open HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss in Registry Editor aka. regedit.exe. Open each subkey with UID values and match DistributionName with your installed distribution name. Then edit/add the Flags DWORD registry value to 0x5.

More Related Contents:

  1. How to permanently set $PATH on Linux/Unix [closed]
  2. How to get CRON to call in the correct PATHs
  3. Assembly compiled executable using INT 0x80 on Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux doesn’t produce output
  4. How to get full path of a file?
  5. Add a bash script to path
  6. Should PATH contain directories or full paths to binaries?
  7. How can I run a Windows executable from WSL (Ubuntu) Bash
  8. How do I get the path of a process in Unix / Linux?
  9. How to check if a program is run in Bash on Ubuntu on Windows and not just plain Ubuntu?
  10. What is PATH on a Mac (UNIX) system?
  11. How to read a file line by line and making a new file for each line having same filename as last word of each line? [closed]
  12. How to change permissions for a folder and its subfolders/files in one step
  13. How can I link to a specific glibc version?
  14. Setting up FTP on Amazon Cloud Server [closed]
  15. How can I setup & run PhantomJS on Ubuntu?
  16. Using curl to send email
  17. Can I open a socket and pass it to another process in Linux
  18. Get the Perl rename utility instead of the built-in rename
  19. How to find the socket buffer size of linux
  20. What does “rc” mean in dot files
  21. extracting unique values between 2 sets/files
  22. How do you link to a specific version of a shared library in GCC
  23. How to add users to Docker container?
  24. How do you normalize a file path in Bash?
  25. How to include all objects of an archive in a shared object?
  26. How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command
  27. How do I find the maximum stack size?
  28. How to check if sed has changed a file
  29. Bash `wait` command, waiting for more than 1 PID to finish execution
  30. How can I get position of cursor in terminal?

Leave a Comment