--mount support for USB flash drives

[HoFamilyMaker]

upgrade to build 20226
run this command wsl --mount
receive the error 'The remote procedure call failed'

Originally posted by @HoFamilyMaker in #6008 (comment)

[OneBlue]

Hi @HoFamilyMaker,
Thanks for reporting this.

This issue has already been identified and will be fixed in an upcoming insider build.

Out of curiosity, what kind of disk are you trying to mount ?

[markwill890]

Is this related to being able to access a WSL folder of the form...

\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\mnt\wsl\docker-desktop-data\data

with "Attempt to access invalid address" (this has been my Quick Access list in Explorer so I now it WAS the right folder).

Curiously, if I drill down to this folder in Explorer I can see the folder but it is now empty.

I have been using this for months, to edit in VS.Code. As of today, though, that folder is empty and I can no longer access the WordPress plugin I have been developing, since I can't access from VS.Code.

Strangely, though, the web site that is supposedly running from their (localhost) remains available. I'm really confused so any help would be really appreciated.

[HoFamilyMaker]

Hi @HoFamilyMaker,
Thanks for reporting this.

This issue has already been identified and will be fixed in an upcoming insider build.

Out of curiosity, what kind of disk are you trying to mount ?

Thanks

I found this
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk

Limitations
USB flash drives are not supported at this time and will fail to attach to WSL 2. USB disks are supported though.

my disk is USB flash
change to USB disks (SSD) run wsl --mount is OK

[HoFamilyMaker]

@HoFamilyMaker can you please update to the latest Insider build and try again to see if your problem is resolved?

You'll want to be on preview build 20226 or higher.

Thanks

My windows 10 is latest Insider build 20226

I found this

Limitations
USB flash drives are not supported at this time and will fail to attach to WSL 2. USB disks are supported though.

try wsl2 to mount USB flash receive the error 'The remote procedure call failed'
mount extend USB disk is OK

[craigloewen-msft]

My apologies @HoFamilyMaker I realize that the fix is not yet in Insiders, but thank you for updating! As @OneBlue mentioned we have a fix incoming for this soon, we'll ping this thread when it's available in the latest Insider build.

[Imperatorn]

Need this so much!

Can't do wsl --mount \.\PhysicalDrive1 :(

[mengesb]

I too am affected by this issue. Would really like to manipulate my linux partitions without additional software like Paragon. native support would be excellent.

Guessing this goes for the following as well:

PS C:\Windows\System32> wmic diskdrive list brief
Caption                       DeviceID            Model                         Partitions  Size
INTEL SSDSC2BA400G4           \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0  INTEL SSDSC2BA400G4           4           400085844480
SanDisk Ultra Fit USB Device  \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1  SanDisk Ultra Fit USB Device  3           15373048320

PS C:\Windows\System32> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --bare
The system cannot find the drive specified.
PS C:\Windows\System32> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --partition 3
The system cannot find the drive specified.

I tried also with my SD card device, but that's definitely flash memory.

[BakedCrossiant]

Any update?

[craigloewen-msft]

Hey folks, wanting to add some clarity here since I realize that my last comment was not very clear. We added a fix for the 'remote procedure call failed' which was the immediate blocker for this in the root issue. However WSL --mount does not yet have support for USB flash drives formatted in Linux file formats. If you'd like to mount a flash drive in WSL you can do that if it's seen in Windows (in other words, if it's formatted in a file format that Windows understands like NTFS) using sudo mount -t drvfs f: /mnt/usbDrive if you have a USB flash drive as F: on windows. As of right now we do not have support for USB flash drives formatted in other file formats that Windows can't understand. In the future we'll be investigating adding support for flash drives to wsl --mount as a feature request for future iterations, but this is currently a backlog request.

[kb3mkd]

The reason I want wsl to work is so I can work on Raspberry pi drives from my Windows PC or laptop.

[Imperatorn]

I want this so I can dd

[laszewsk]

It would be great to get more clarification on this if It now works or not. I am confused if it works or not.

Use case why we like this feature:

A bunch of us seem to want to get access to the Raspberry PI sdcards so we can manipulate them. Originally we wanted to use wsl2 (the development version but the person working on this failed o get it working). Thus we developed an alternative in for gitbash at https://github.com/cloudmesh/cloudmesh-pi-burn in the branch https://github.com/cloudmesh/cloudmesh-pi-burn/tree/windows
This is so we can in the meanwhile access the boot partition in windows directly.
For this we developed a Diskpart class and it works reasonably well (not everything is yet working. we have not done the write part yet). HOwever if we were to have this in wsl2 we could do something like https://cloudmesh.github.io/pi/tutorial/raspberry-burn/ directly in wsl2.
Right now we use gitbash.

I think many of us using the Pi for education would really appreciate a clarification about the status of this. Thanks

[craigloewen-msft]

@laszewsk as of right now --mount does not support USB flash drives if they are formatted in a Linux file format. This issue is left open to track this request. Please see this comment for full details: #6011 (comment)

[Bluscream]

Can someone tell me how to do this please? I need to fsck my raspi card

[laszewsk]

you could do a boot from a live linux CD and then use fsck from that.

In case you like to burn multiple SD Cards for a PI cluster, we updated our documentation at

• https://piplanet.org
• https://cloudmesh.github.io/pi/tutorial/

[Bluscream]

you could do a boot from a live linux CD and then use fsck from that.

In case you like to burn multiple SD Cards for a PI cluster, we updated our documentation at

• https://piplanet.org
• https://cloudmesh.github.io/pi/tutorial/

Thanks, i've tried that but it was unable to fix my card through Parted and commandline

[blockfeed]

+1, this feature is critical for anyone doing embedded development (and relies on transfers from SD cards via USB adapter).

[luizoti]

Same thing here, when using an sd card with adapter.

+1, this feature is critical for anyone doing embedded development (and relies on transfers from SD cards via USB adapter).

[AlexeiScherbakov]

Workaround is use Usb Reader (notebook integrated not allways works) + VMWare with Debian and GParted
You can install VMWare Player, becase it now works with WLS2, but without hardware accelleration

[Eugene-Lam]

Same here, not working using USB reader

DeviceID           Caption                          Partitions Size          Model
--------           -------                          ---------- ----          -----
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB     3          1000202273280 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device 2          15924142080   Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device 0                        Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device 0                        Lexar SD  WorkflowUR2 USB Device

PS C:\Users\Eugene> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
The system cannot find the drive specified.

laptop buildin sd card slot not working too

PS C:\Users\Eugene> wmic diskdrive list brief
Caption                       DeviceID            Model                         Partitions  Size
Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB  \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0  Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB  3           1000202273280
PciE SDHC-Card                \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1  PciE SDHC-Card                2           15924142080

PS C:\Users\Eugene> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
The system cannot find the drive specified.

[josh-hetland]

+1 on the desire to interact with my Pi SD card from windows

[laszewsk]

We just released a new version of cloudmesh-pi-burn: https://cloudmesh.github.io/pi/tutorial/raspberry-burn-windows/
Although we use it for clusters, it can be used to burn a single card. However, the full potential is provided when you burn a cluster directly on the SD Cards, plug them in, switch the pis on and you have a readily configured cluster in your network.
It does not burn in WSL2, BUT it burns on Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu. We use this regularly. Just in case you need a SLURM cluster, we just added documentation on how to do that here https://github.com/cloudmesh/cloudmesh-slurm#readme. We welcome contributions and improvements. We have used this code over the last 2 years and improved upon so it works now with the 64 bit OS.

[akash07k]

Great, can you share your kernel so that I can quickly check if it works for me?
Later will build it for myself.

I found what worked for me best was to delete windows and install ubuntu

[knightian]

I found what worked for me best was to delete windows and install ubuntu

🤣 True

[Animesh-Thakur]

Great, can you share your kernel so that I can quickly check if it works for me? Later will build it for myself.

I found what worked for me best was to delete windows and install ubuntu

Can't upload kernel to something which I'll feel comfortable sharing, might write my step by step when I have time, but that'll have to wait, hope you can work it out without my help, because I won't count on it.

PS. can't upload it on GH, size too large

[akash07k]

Ok, I'll try this weekend. If you write your tutorial in between, then let me know.

…

On 3/27/2023 10:07 PM, Animesh Thakur wrote: Great, can you share your kernel so that I can quickly check if it works for me? Later will build it for myself. I found what worked for me best was to delete windows and install ubuntu Can't upload kernel to something which I'll feel comfortable sharing, might write my step by step when I have time, but that'll have to wait, hope you can work it out without my help, because I won't count on it. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6011 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABQWBM3EIA5HWH63IG3UZXTW6G64XANCNFSM4SAKTF3Q>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[bengalih]

Just wanting to clarify here and maybe help serve as a reminder for anyone else coming to this thread that hasn't read all the way through:

• Waited well over a year for the following issue to be resolved and "mount" ported from insider builds to the wslstore release:
  --mount option available on Win10 (non-Insider) #7940

• Now that wsl --mount can be used on Windows 10 natively, I get:
  The system cannot find the drive specified

This is because , according to this issue, USB flash drives (which is what I needed to mount all along) are still not supported even after almost 3 years of this issue being open?!
(I can't be sure, but it also appears that the built-in mount option also does not support mounting non-windows formatted filesystems???)

• Instead, Microsoft directs us to use usbipd-win which is what was required as the workaround for any --mount options on Windows 10 until this was finally ported!

• The usbipd-win solution worked fine for mounting USB flash disks formatted with EXT3/EXT4 file systems. The only concern is back when I implemented it required building a custom kernel with USB support because according to usbipd-win page:

Currently, WSL 2 does not support USB devices by default.

However, their support wiki page also states:

Recent versions of Windows running WSL kernel 5.10.60.1 or later already include support for common scenarios like USB-to-serial adapters and flashing embedded development boards. If you're trying to do one of these tasks on Ubuntu, you can avoid recompiling the kernel by following the WSL Setup instructions at the top of this page. If you require special drivers, you'll need to build your own kernel for WSL 2.

I'm still running off the kernel I compiled with no issues, but it seems that some users may not need to compile their own kernels.

In short, it seems that the "wsl --mount" option is still severely lacking in functionality and that usbipd-mount may be the preferable solution.

Is there any advantage, if USB support is now compiled into WSL kernel and therefore usbipd-win setup is very easy to use "wsl --mount" over usbipd-win?

With usbupd-win I was able to perform block-level operations against a mounted USB flash drive. I would think that most other operations would build on top of that and not have issues.

If it were up to me, at this point, I would recommend the use of usbipd-win in any scenario due to my experience and the limitations of "wsl --mount". With the exception of 5 minutes of setup, there seems to me no disadvantage. However I am but one user and admittedly do not understand the full scope of the underlying architecture between the two choices.

Can anyone speak to how/why/when "wsl --mount" would be a superior option?

[JiaHuann]

The same here,Looking forward to deal with it early

[MaximumPotato]

@OneBlue @craigloewen-msft Hey folks, what ever became of this issue? I just plopped the SD card from one of my Rasp Pi's into a card reader and thought I'd be able to access its contents from WSL to move some stuff around. That feels like a pretty basic and common use-case for WSL to me if one does not have some flavor of Linux on hand to access non-NTFS / FAT formatted drives. I'm guessing this is very difficult feature to implement, given how long this ticket has been open?

[alexeldeib]

for what it's worth, I was able to access a luks partition on a USB drive by using usbipd approach. I needed to rebuild my kernel with CONFIG_USB_STORAGE, everything else was already enabled by default. I followed the steps here to rebuild, additionally configuring CONFIG_USB_STORAGE as the steps only mention CONFIG_USB and other basic USB driver configuration.

if that works with devmapper and encrypted partitions, I imagine it would cover most scenarios, which probably also explains the relative low priority/long issue age.

[AndrewMcCdB]

@alexeldeib I also managed this by the method you link to, on Windows 11. However the external SD card reader I wanted to talk to is on a USB-C dock that is also driving my 2 external monitors. I got control of the SD card, but in doing so, I lost the displays. This condition persists after reboot. The PC is no longer able to use the dock to drive the external monitors. So I'll have to roll back to the standard wsl kernel. Using a raspberry pi for this kind of work is still the most sensible answer.

[Cris--]

Still can't edit SD-Card in a USB-Adapter. Trying it with a LibreElec ext4 partition.

PS C:\Users\Xeno> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 --bare
Das System kann das angegebene Laufwerk nicht finden.
Error code: Wsl/Service/AttachDisk/0x8007000f

[keithstellyes]

Disappointing this is still an issue. Recommended friend to use WSL to set up an SD card for Arch for Raspberry Pi, since I assumed this would just work, unfortunately just get the same issue as described numerous times in this thread.

+1 for "just install Linux" gang

[bpringlemeir]

for what it's worth, I was able to access a luks partition on a USB drive by using usbipd approach. I needed to rebuild my kernel with CONFIG_USB_STORAGE, everything else was already enabled by default. I followed the steps here to rebuild, additionally configuring CONFIG_USB_STORAGE as the steps only mention CONFIG_USB and other basic USB driver configuration.

Wouldn't it make sense to release the stock builds with CONFIG_USB_STORAGE. Then usbipd.exe would be a method to access a USB stick. This is what I was initially trying, before I heard of the '--mount' option to wsl. Is this is a real overhead in the kernel. At the very least it could be a module supplied with the distro releases. It is clear lots of people desire this feature and MS has probably wasted more time responding to this thread than the time it would take to bundle USB_STORAGE.

I alway just revert to using a Linux box instead trying to use WSL2 for this issue. Compiling custom WSL2 kernels is too much effort.

[pmunin]

It's 2024 and still...

$/ GET-WMIOBJECT -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"
....
Partitions : 0
DeviceID   : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
Model      : Mass Storage Device USB Device
Size       : 128042933760
Caption    : Mass Storage Device USB Device


$/ wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
The system cannot find the drive specified.

[warpdesign]

Same error here.

PS C:\Windows\system32> GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"

DeviceID           Caption                    Partitions Size         Model
--------           -------                    ---------- ----         -----
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 SDXC Card                  1          128042933760 SDXC Card
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 SAMSUNG MZFLV256HCHP-000MV 3          256052966400 SAMSUNG MZFLV256HCHP-000MV

PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --bare
Le lecteur spécifié est introuvable.
Error code: Wsl/Service/AttachDisk/HCS/0x8007000f

[Feijo]

It's been 4 years, Microsoft, c'mon...

[cad42s13]

PS C:\Windows\system32> GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"

DeviceID           Caption                              Partitions Size          Model
--------           -------                              ---------- ----          -----
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 SAMSUNG MZVL4512HBLU-00BLL           3          512105932800  SAMSUNG MZVL4512HBLU-00BLL
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 NORELSYS 1081CS0 USB Device          0                        NORELSYS 1081CS0 USB Device
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4 Microsoft Virtual Disk               1          1099506078720 Microsoft Virtual Disk
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 NORELSYS 1081CS1 USB Device          2          64083156480   NORELSYS 1081CS1 USB Device
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 Kingston UHS-II SD Reader USB Device 0          15924142080   Kingston UHS-II SD Reader USB Device


PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 --bare
The system cannot find the drive specified.
Error code: Wsl/Service/AttachDisk/0x8007000f

[SteffenSH]

See also many other issues like #8090 and #8408.

[bltcn]

me too

[alfred-zaki]

[badigit]

need solution

[dominic-valentino-anode]

Come on MS please make this work!

[novitk]

Another 6 month go by. Why is this so hard to implement, MS?

[jaredkrinke]

In case anyone else also only needs to read files from a Linux-formatted microSD card, I will share a Hyper-V-based workaround (which, again, only works for reading; it does not work for writing).

Rather than installing third-party software and opening up a port to my local subnet (!), I was able to inconveniently work around the lack of built-in USB drivers (in WSL 2.2.4.0, kernel 5.15.153.1-2) using Hyper-V by:

1. Cloning the microSD card into a VHD file using Hyper-V -> Action ->New -> Hard Disk -> ... -> Configure Disk -> Copy the contents of the specified physical disk
2. Mounting the VHD via wsl --mount <path to VHD> --vhd
3. Mounting the relevant partition (in my case, /dev/sdd2) from within WSL

Note that this copies the whole drive, so it's quite slow--but still faster than figuring out how to recompile the WSL2 kernel to add the usb-storage module--at least for me!

[realyukii]

I followed this guide but got the same error as others.

EDIT:
NVM, I just forgot to specify the partition that I want to mount to.

[KuzuryuYaichi]

As this isuue is so utility for embedded developers, could MS work harder on it?

[Nirmal4G]

I hit this too. May be not related to embedded development, but I have a secondary 512GB Flash drive and SSD 2230 disk, and I would very much like to move all my WSL distros to disk instead of using VHDs on Windows System disk. I'm also trying to see if I can merge both desktop and WSL editions into one partition so that I can use the same image for Azure, Hyper-V, Bare metal boot and WSL scenarios.

[UchihaYuki]

Need SD Card reader support!