12 Comments

Will this work on Windows 10?

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I'm afraid it doesn't; Windows 11 is required for this feature. Sorry.

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Thanks you. I have a question. Why does the bridged network still use the MAC adapter on Win11 instead of the MAC address on WSL. Is it just simulating a bridged network?

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Running Windows 10 Pro (22H2), WSL 2 1.1.3.0 (according to "Installed version" on Microsoft Store), created the Hyper-V bridged adapter, created the .wslconfig file per instructions, re-launched WSL, but I'm not getting an IP address that can be seen on my network via DHCP, still just seeing the existing, internal IP address. Does this not work with Windows 10 Pro?

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I'm afraid it doesn't; Windows 11 is required for this feature. Sorry.

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Hi Alistair, very helpful. Works great. Question, once using bridging, what needs to be done to connect from WSL2 to Windows? For example, I can connect from Windows to WSL2, such as ssh'ing & ping, but not WSL2 to Windows. Both appear to be on same subnet (10.0.0.*) & turning off Windows Defender didn't help. Does a net route need to be added or something? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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As far as I know, nothing special is required. On my system, at least, I can connect in both directions without needing additional configuration. You shouldn't need to add any routes because, as you say, they're on the same subnet.

The Windows firewall configuration is probably the first place I would have looked, too, since Windows will apply it to incoming traffic from WSL under bridged networking. Might be worth a recheck? Other than that, I'm not certain what the issue might be.

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Great write-up. Thanks, especially for pointing out the downsides of bridged networking. This helped steer me in the right direction.

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Terrible manual. Where to find wired.network ? What to do with genie ? To many questions

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Is this still working for you? I've been trying it, but I can't get it to work at all.

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Still working fine for me, yes.

What's happening when you try it?

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I was able to get it working. I had to upgrade WSL to the preview version. I have a new problem to tackle now. I can't determine how to make a bridge (that works) inside of my distro. It seems like WSL2 only likes to connect to it's pre-made interface.

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