EECS 280 Tutorials

Windows Command line tools (WSL)

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) runs an Ubuntu Linux guest virtual machine on your Windows host machine.

Upgrade Windows

We recommend Windows 11. Windows 10 version 2004 build 19041 and higher will also work. Here’s how to check your Windows version.

Free Windows upgrades are available for UM students via OnTheHub. If you have an older Windows machine and are not able to upgrade, please reach out to course instructors for assistance.

Install WSL

Start PowerShell and run it as administrator. Search for PowerShell in the start menu, then right-click and select “Run as administrator”.

PowerShell is a command-line interface for Windows. Its command prompt ends with a > (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\system32>). To follow the steps below, type the commands that appear after the > and hit enter.

Check if WSL is already installed by running the command wsl -l -v. If you see a list like below, WSL is already installed.

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl -l -v
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu-24.04           Running         2

If the VERSION is 1, you must upgrade to WSL 2.

If you already have an Ubuntu distribution with VERSION 2, skip to Setup Ubuntu below.

Otherwise, WSL is not installed and you’ll see help text similar to the following. (This is expected for most students.)

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl -l -v
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Usage: wsl.exe [Argument]
...

Install WSL. We recommend the most recent Ubuntu LTS version from the Microsoft App Store, currently Ubuntu 24.04.

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04

Restart your computer.

Start PowerShell as administrator, and check that WSL Ubuntu is now installed with version 2.

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl -l -v
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu-24.04           Running         2

Setup Ubuntu

From the previous section, you have installed WSL and an Ubuntu Linux distribution. You’ll do most C++ development in Ubuntu rather than Windows. Let’s get it set up.

Start an Ubuntu Bash shell. Bash is a command-line interface for Linux. Search for “Ubuntu” (or “Ubuntu 24.04 LTS”) or “bash” in the start menu.

The bash command prompt ends with a $. To follow the steps below, type commands that appear after the $ and hit enter.

First time: create account

The first time you open Ubuntu, you will be prompted to create a Linux username and password. Follow the prompts to create one.

• Choose a username that is all lowercase characters (could be your uniqname).
• While typing your password, the characters are not shown. This is fine.
• You can press Enter to skip fields other than username and password (e.g. “room number”).

Double check that your user has been created.

$ whoami
awdeorio  # this should NOT say root

$ whoami
root  # SOMEthiNG IS WRONG

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --unregister Ubuntu-24.04
Unregistering.
The operation completed successfully.

C:\WINDOWS\system32> wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is already installed.
Launching Ubuntu 24.04 LTS...
Installing, this may take a few minutes...
Please create a default UNIX user account. The username does not need to match your Windows username.
For more information visit: https://aka.ms/wslusers
Enter a new UNIX username:

Install CLI tools

From an Ubuntu bash terminal, use the apt package manager to install a few command line programs.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install g++ make rsync wget git ssh gdb python3 tree

Home Directory

You’ll generally want to store your coding projects in the Linux filesystem, which is separate from your Windows filesystem.

Open an Ubuntu bash terminal and run cd ~. This will take you to your Ubuntu home directory. Running pwd afterward confirms the location. (Your username will be different.)

$ cd ~
$ pwd
/home/jjuett

Create an EECS 280 folder by running mkdir ~/eecs280. Running ls afterward confirms the folder has been created.

$ mkdir ~/eecs280
$ ls
eecs280

We highly recommend you store all coding work for EECS 280 projects and labs here.

$ pwd
/home/awdeorio ...         # Good, Linux home
/c/mnt/Users/awdeorio ...  # Bad, Windows home

Access via File Explorer

Even though the files are stored in the Linux filesystem, you can still access them from the Windows file explorer. Run explorer.exe . to open an explorer window in bash’s current directory (Note the extra . at the end, which means “current directory”.)

$ explorer.exe .

Right-click on the eecs280 folder and select “Pin to Quick Access”. This adds a shortcut to the left sidebar, which is useful for e.g. finding and submitting your files to the autograder via a web browser.

You can also open a bash terminal in the current directory of your file explorer. Click the blank area to the right of where the directory path is shown. Then, type “bash” (replacing the text already there) and hit enter.

This will open a new bash terminal in the same directory as the file explorer.

CLI Tutorial

Now would be a great time to take a look at our CLI Tutorial.

Pro-tips

Accessing Windows files from Linux

To access Windows files from Linux, navigate to /mnt/c/.

For example, here's how to access your Windows Desktop.  Your username will be different.
```console
$ cd /mnt/c/Users
$ ls
'All Users'  'Default User'   defaultuser0   awdeorio   Default   Public   defaultuser100000   desktop.ini
$ cd awdeorio
$ ls
... Desktop  Downloads ...
$ cd Desktop

Copy/Paste in Terminal

Copy/Paste functionality in your bash terminal may be enabled by default with the usual ctrl + c and ctrl + v keyboard shortcuts.

Or, try ctrl + shift + c and ctrl + shift + v.

If these do not work, right click on the terminal window header. If you see option for “Settings”, go to “Settings” -> “Actions” and add your desired keybindings for copy/paste. If you see an option for “Properties”, go to “Properties” -> “Options” and ensure “Use Ctrl+Shift+C/V as Copy/Paste” box is checked.

Troubleshooting

Enable Virtualization

WSL2 requires virtualization support. Follow the steps below to ensure it is enabled.

Step 1
Launch the task manager by pressing ctrl + shift + esc. Click on the “Performance” tab.

If you see “Virtualization: Enabled”, proceed to step 2. If you don’t see “Virtualization” at all, your computer may not support WSL. (This should only be the case for very old machines.)

If you see “Virtualization: Disabled”, you need to enable virtualization in BIOS settings. The method for doing this varies depending on your computer’s manufacturer, but instructions are generally available online, e.g. here. Once you have restarted into BIOS, navigate the options with your keyboard to find and enable virtualization. Save your changes and restart your computer.

Step 2
Once virtualization is enabled, ensure the “Virtual Machine Platform” feature is enabled in Windows. Search for “Turn Windows features on or off” in the start menu. Scroll down and ensure that “Virtual Machine Platform” is checked. If it is not, check the box and click “OK”. You may be asked to restart your computer.

Attempt to install WSL again, following the instructions at the top of this guide.

Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you’re running commands like wsl -l -v or wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04, but it just prints out a generic help message, you may need to enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux feature. Search for “Turn Windows features on or off” in the start menu. Scroll down and ensure that “Windows Subsystem for Linux” is checked. If it is not, check the box and click “OK”. You may be asked to restart your computer.

Microsoft Troubleshooting

Microsoft maintains an extensive troubleshooting page for WSL installation. If you’re getting a specific error code/message, you may be able to match it with a resolution here.

Forgot Password

If you forgot you WSL password, follow the steps here to reset it. Scroll down to the part beginnning with “If you forgot the password for yoru Linux distribution:”.

Manual Installation

If you are running an older version of Windows 10 and unable to update to build 19041 or higher, you may be able to perform a manual installation. Use this only as a last resort option.

Acknowledgments

Original document written by Andrew DeOrio awdeorio@umich.edu.

This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License. You’re free to copy and share this document, but not to sell it. You may not share source code provided with this document.