I've just upgraded the Windows 10 in my laptop to Redstone 1. So I had a test of the Linux subsystem (aka. WSL, LXSS or Bash on Windows). Basically, everything is fine, but there is a problem that the RootFS of WSL is located in the %LocalAppData% path (e.g. C:\Users\xyz\AppData\Local), which is also the place where my Windows OS located. It consumes a lot of the SSD hard drive space in my laptop and I hope I can move it to my external hard drive.
There is an another problem. Since the other hard drive partitions are mounted as DriveFS, it does not support some Linux filesystem features like chmod, and some of my Linux project build scripts only works in VoIFS, which only located in / and /home.
So I tried to move the whole WSL RootFS to another hard drive. Firstly I've tried to make a NTFS Junction (hard link) for C:\Users\xyz\AppData\Local\lxss. I've uninstalled the WSL completely and run mklink for the RootFS to another hard drive, and when I reinstall the WSL again, it couldn't create the new user, and it reports error with code 0x80070003.
Then I searched around, and I got this: moving Linux filesystem - issue #449. It seems that moving and making hard link for WSL RootFS only works before Windows 10 Build 14388, it does not work in the Windows 10 Build 14393 RTM. The only way is moving the whole %LocalAppData% to the external hard drive, but I cannot do that since I'm a laptop user and I can't bring an external hard drive everywhere!
So I would like to ask that, is there any other ways to move WSL out of my system partition? If I can't do that, can I create an extra VoIFS work directory in some other places and compile my stuff?
Thanks and regards, Jackson
You can move the distribution to another drive using lxRunOffline.
1. Set permissions to the target folder. First, I think you must set some permissions to the folder where the distribution will be moved. You may use icacls <dir> /grant "<user>:(OI)(CI)(F)" to set the proper permissions.
C:\> whoami
test\jaime
C:\> icacls D:\wsl /grant "jaime:(OI)(CI)(F)"
NOTE: In addition to the above permissions, I have activated the long path names in Windows.
2. Move the distribution. Using lxrunoffline move.
C:\wsl> lxrunoffline move -n Ubuntu-18.04 -d d:\wsl\installed\Ubuntu-18.04
You may check the installation folder using
C:\wsl> lxrunoffline get-dir -n Ubuntu-18.04
d:\wsl\installed\Ubuntu-18.04
3. Run the distribution. after moving the distribution, you can run the distribution using wsl or the same lxrunoffline
C:\wsl> lxrunoffline run -n Ubuntu-18.04 -w
user@test:~$ exit
logout
C:\wsl> wsl
user@test:/mnt/c/wsl$ exit
logout
WSL does not (currently) support moving or installing distro to non-system drives. However, this is a scenario we are exploring for future Windows releases.
Note that as of Fall Creators Update (FCU), distros are now installed via Windows store and are downloaded to, and expanded to different folders (i.e. not under %localappdata%\lxss).
NOte: While we're working to improve this scenario in future Windows releases, please DO NOT spelunk into the distro folders from Windows or Windows apps remains: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/11/17/do-not-change-linux-files-using-windows-apps-and-tools/
Take a look to https://github.com/DDoSolitary/LxRunOffline
choco install lxrunoffline
- No Internet access required when installing.
- Install any Linux distros to any location on your disk.
- Moving existing installations to other locations.
- Duplicating existing installations. (To create backups.)
- Register existing installation directories. (For portable usage.)
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38779801/move-wsl-bash-on-windows-root-filesystem-to-another-hard-drive