Connecting VPN Inside WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) Environment
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. With WSL, you can run a GNU/Linux environment directly on top of Windows, without the need for a virtual machine.
Remote VPN Setup
To connect to a VPN via Linux machines and access WSL VPN, you need to set up a remote VPN on a Linux machine. This can be done using various VPN clients such as OpenVPN, StrongSwan, or WireGuard. In this example, we will use OpenVPN.
Installing OpenVPN
To install OpenVPN on your Linux machine, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install openvpnConfiguring OpenVPN
After installing OpenVPN, you need to configure it by creating a new OpenVPN configuration file. This can be done using a text editor such as nano or vim.
sudo nano /etc/openvpn/client.confIn the configuration file, you need to specify the location of the VPN server certificate, the VPN server address, and the encryption settings. Here is an example configuration file:
client
dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.example.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
ca ca.crt
cert client.crt
key client.key
tls-auth ta.key 1
cipher AES-256-CBC
auth SHA256
verb 3
Accessing WSL VPN
Once you have set up the remote VPN on your Linux machine, you can access the WSL VPN by pinging the hardware visible to the Linux machine. This can be done using the following command:
ping -I tun0 vpn.example.comNote: Replace tun0 with the name of the network interface used by OpenVPN and vpn.example.com with the address of the VPN server.
- Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.
- To connect to a VPN via Linux machines and access WSL VPN, you need to set up a remote VPN on a Linux machine using a VPN client such as OpenVPN, StrongSwan, or WireGuard.
- Once you have set up the remote VPN on your Linux machine, you can access the WSL VPN by pinging the hardware visible to the Linux machine.