WSL2 stopped running windows tools seemingly all of a sudden - cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

mark

8/14/24, 1:45 PM

I have been using WSL2 for almost a year now and was always able to run windows tools from it without any problems.

Today I have noticed I am unable to do it anymore:

mark@L-R910LPKW:~$ alias npp
alias npp='/mnt/c/Program\ Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe'
mark@L-R910LPKW:~$ ls -l /mnt/c/Program\ Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe
-r-xr-xr-x 1 mark mark 6629712 Apr  4 13:58 '/mnt/c/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe'
mark@L-R910LPKW:~$ npp
-bash: /mnt/c/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
mark@L-R910LPKW:~$

And it does not matter which windows tool I am trying to run - it does not run any.

A quick search of the Internet brought me to /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop, but I cannot create it:

mark@L-R910LPKW:~$ sudo -i
-bash: /mnt/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/powershell.exe: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
root@L-R910LPKW:~# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
root@L-R910LPKW:~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop
-bash: /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop: Permission denied
root@L-R910LPKW:~#

I think it is an outdated piece of information anyway, because I can see a status file there and:

root@L-R910LPKW:~# cat /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/status
enabled
root@L-R910LPKW:~#

I think there was some kind of an update to Windows (our work laptops are updated automatically) that broke it.

Finally, my details are:

root@L-R910LPKW:~# uname -a
Linux L-R910LPKW 5.15.90.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2 #1 SMP Fri Jan 27 02:56:13 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@L-R910LPKW:~#

Any help is greatly appreciated.

1 + 0

linux

windows

windows-subsystem-for-linux

Score:1

Server

Jaromanda X

8/15/24, 12:42 AM

From what I've read, this is a "known issue" with WSL2 in Windows 11 when you enable systemd ... i.e.

/etc/wsl.conf contains

[boot]
systemd=true

You can either remove that, or:

Check the contents/existence of /usr/lib/binfmt.d/WSLInterop.conf - it probably won't exist - so

Firstly, run this

sudo sh -c 'echo :WSLInterop:M::MZ::/init:PF > /usr/lib/binfmt.d/WSLInterop.conf'

or if you are root

echo :WSLInterop:M::MZ::/init:PF > /usr/lib/binfmt.d/WSLInterop.conf

Then

sudo systemctl restart systemd-binfmt

Tested and works on my systems (didn't realise it stopped working, but then I very rarely use Windows commands in WSL)

If that still doesn't work (reported not to fully work on some systems)

wsl --shutdown

Then go back into WSL and you should be good

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