How to install with no internet from WSL 2

[ballardt]

The instructions in the README seem to use apt to install packages from within WSL 2, but, as far as I understand, the purpose of the software is to provide internet access to the VM. In my case, for example, I cannot use apt as it is listed in the README commands, even with Docker Desktop for Windows installed, as it fails to resolve the request to the package repository.

Am I missing something, or does this software require a functioning apt get to work? Thanks, if I could get it working this would be extremely helpful for several people on my team. In any case, I am thinking I may be able to download the packages manually and install with dpkg.

[albertony]

No you are not missing something... unless I am missing something too! :)

But I did this: Located download links for individual package files on my host computer and downloaded them from a browser (or rather, a PowerShell script), then used the package tool in wsl in "offline-mode" to install the packages from file, by referencing them in the /mnt/c/etc. path back where they are on the host. Needs the package socat, but then it needs some dependencies that are also missing so there are a couple more.

Debian:

• The official image being on "stretch" still, I needed the following:
  https://packages.debian.org/stretch/amd64/libwrap0/download
  https://packages.debian.org/stretch/amd64/libssl1.1/download
  https://packages.debian.org/stretch/amd64/socat/download
• Just download the files and then from wsl refer to the files by path. Example (not the actual file names, don't know if order is important, but I did dependencies first and socat last):
  apt-get install libwrap0.deb libssl1.1.deb socat.deb

Ubuntu 20.04:

• Only missing socat package. Download url can be retrieved by the folowing command in wsl: apt-get install socat --print-uris -qq. Then download this link on host etc, and install it just like with Debian.

Alpine:

• Tested the official "Minimal root filesystem" distribution from alpinelinux.org, so not actually a WSL distribution at all, but works like a charm. Except, needs bash to run the wsl-vpnkit script.
• Downloads from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/main/x86_64/
• Packages needed: ncurses-terminfo-base, ncurses-libs, readline, socat, bash
• Install with apk add --quiet --repositories-file /dev/null <packagefiles>....

Also download npiperelay and Docker Desktop on host. As for the vpnkit.exe and vpnkit-tap-vsockd I downloaded just downloaded the Docker installer and instracted it with 7-Zip, first the .exe then the iso, to just grap these two files.

[ballardt]

@albertony This did indeed work for me, thank you!

[sakai135]

Thanks for the detailed steps, @albertony. The steps in the README were intended for when you have access to the internet within WSL2 but no access when connected to the VPN, since that was the situation I had. I'll try to update the README sometime soon to incorporate this where you don't have internet access at all within WSL2.

[andyneff]

Another option is to convert the WSL to WSL1, install packages, and convert it back to WSL2

• wsl --set-version {distro_name} 1
• wsl --set-version {distro_name} 2