In this section

1. Access WSL from PowerShell
2. User management
3. File system management and installation

1. Access WSL from PowerShell

WSL Install, List and Uninstall

wsl --install
wsl --list --verbose
wsl --unregister Ubuntu

Start WSL

wsl
Start-Process wsl -ArgumentList "-d Ubuntu -e tail -f /dev/null" -WindowStyle Hidden
wsl.exe -d Ubuntu --launch
wsl -u root
wsl -u barry75

Access WSL2 from Win Explorer

\\wsl$

Stop WSL

wsl --shutdown

Transfer directory and file from PowerShell

scp -r dirname barry75@barryonweb.com:/home/barry75/
scp filename.conf barry75@barryonweb.com:/home/barry75/

2. User management

List all users on the system

cat /etc/passwd

Change username as root

usermod -l barry75 oldname

Rename home dir

usermod -d /home/barry75 -m barry75

Update group

groupmod -n barry75 oldname

Get details on user

id barry75

Switch user

su - barry75

Permissions

Each file or directory in Linux has two ownership attributes:

• Owner (user): The specific user who owns the file or directory.
• Group: The group that owns the file or directory.

Check status

ls -ld /home/barry75/
ls -l
groups barry75

Change assigned group / owner / both (-R=recursive) of /var/www

sudo chown -R :www-data /var/www
sudo chown -R barry75 /var/www
sudo chown -R barry75:www-data /var/www

Add user to www-data group

sudo usermod -a -G www-data barry75

Adjust the directory permissions to allow members of assigned group to write:

sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www

Adjust the directory permissions to allow owner to execute:

sudo chmod -R u+x /var/www

Skip password for user

sudo visudo
barry75 ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

3. File system management and installation

Change default user

nano /etc/wsl.conf
    [user]
    default=newuser

Change default dir to home on open WSL

nano ~/.bashrc 
    cd ~ # add to end of file

Delete empty dir / dir / content within current dir

rm dirName
rm -rf dirname
rm -rf ./*

Check if systemd is enabled / check status

ps -p 1 -o comm=
systemctl status

After installation

• refresh local package index with the latest changes made in the repositories

    sudo apt update  
  

• upgrade all the installed packages to their latest available versions

    sudo apt upgrade -y 
  

• get internal IP address (WSL)

    ip addr show eth0 | grep inet 
    hostname -I
  

Get internal WSL IP adress

ip addr show eth0 
hostname -I

Install UFW

sudo apt install ufw -y 

• Setup

    sudo ufw default allow outgoing
    sudo ufw default deny incoming
    sudo ufw enable
    sudo ufw status verbose
  

• Allow access

    sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
    sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
    sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
  

• Monitor blocked or allowed traffic, enable logging:

    sudo ufw logging on
  

• Logs will be written to /var/log/ufw.log. You can view them with:

    sudo tail -f /var/log/ufw.log
  

Install Apache web server

sudo apt install apache2 -y 

• After enabling sites, before reload, check syntax

   sudo apachectl configtest # Syntax OK expected