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I can't access docker-desktop-data in WSL2 with command wsl -d docker-desktop-data. I suspect that docker desktop(with WSL) stores there docker volumes which I want to look at. Interestingly that for other VMs this method(wsl -d <distroname>) works. Why is it different for docker-desktop-data?

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As for why we can't access it via wsl -d docker-desktop-data, that appears to be because it has a 0 byte /init.

As for how to inspect it, I used wsl --export docker-desktop-data docker-desktop-data.tar and just examined the resulting tar file. I just recently installed Docker on Windows, so I haven't created any volumes yet to see if they are stored there.

Updated:

I don't believe this was possible at the time (but I'm not sure), but a better solution than exporting is:

$ findmnt -a | grep "version-pack-data\s"
| |-/mnt/wsl/docker-desktop-data/version-pack-data        /dev/sdf[/version-pack-data]          ext4          rw,relatime,discard,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered
# Using the block device returned (sdf in this case):
$ sudo mount /dev/sdf /mnt/wsl/instances/docker-desktop-data -o X-mount.mkdir
$ cd /mnt/wsl/instances/docker-desktop-data

This will allow you to view docker-desktop-data as its original Ext4 filesystem, with symlinks and permissions intact.

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  • Note, if you (or I) were using the Insider build of Windows, I believe it now has the ability to mount vhdx files (or, if not now, then soon), so we could in theory just mount that to examine it.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:56
  • Also thinking, if we wanted to get really hacky, we might could delete the WSL instance, modify the tar (perhaps with a minimal shell), and reimport it back in under the same name.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:59
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    I guess this (0 byte /init) happened recently, because a few months ago, I remeber, that it was possible "to go into" that VM. After installation of Docker Desktop I played a bit with it and it was interesting for me why 2 additional wsl distros were created, so inspected both of them
    – maks
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 20:12

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