Mount WSL file system in Windows to enable access via cmd.exe or PowerShell

Ajay TekamAjay Tekam
1 min read

The windows command prompt does not understand UNC (Universal Naming Convention) paths which starts with \\ rather than a drive letter, so mapping a UNC path to a drive will convert it to a drive letter path. Follow the below instruction to do the same:

1. Get the wsl destro version (run command in cmd.exe/powershell)

\> wsl -l

Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-20.04 (Default)

2. Mount the wsl filesystem as a network drive by below command

net use <drive-name>: \\wsl$\<destro_name>

example:

\> net use z: \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04

The drive Z: will be visible as a network drive in windows file system. At above command wsl$ is a special hostname that tells Windows to connect to WSL Ubuntu-20.04 is a distribution name under WSL.

Now you can access/explore wsl filesystem wiith cmd.exe/powershell

Z:

Thanks for Stopping by. Cheers…!

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Written by

Ajay Tekam
Ajay Tekam

I am working as a Cloud Engineer with experience in DevOps, automation, CICD, build pipelines, jenkins pipelines, version control, shell scripting, python automation, golang automation, cloud services (AWS, OCI, Azure), containers and microservices, terraform, ansible.