Importing a WSL2 distro with wsl --imoprt --vhd doesn't set default user

[garysassano]

When transferring a WSL2 Ubuntu distribution between systems, I used the following commands:

First, on the source system to export the distribution:

wsl --export --vhd Ubuntu-24.04 ubuntu-24.04.vhdx

Then, on the destination system to import it:

wsl --import --vhd Ubuntu-24.04 \ubuntu-24.04.vhdx

After importing the distribution, I noticed two configuration issues that need to be addressed to match the default setup that comes with a Microsoft Store installation.

First, the imported distribution defaults to using the root user instead of a default user account. When installing Ubuntu from the Microsoft Store, it automatically sets up and uses a default user account for all operations.

Second, the shell environment isn't initializing properly. The login shell doesn't start automatically, which means .profile and .bashrc files aren't being loaded at startup. Currently, this requires manually running bash --login to get the proper shell environment. In contrast, a Microsoft Store installation handles all of this automatically, providing a properly configured bash login shell that loads all user profile files on startup.

The goal is to replicate the Microsoft Store's automatic configuration to achieve the same seamless experience with our imported distribution.

[github-actions]

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Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
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.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

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View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Open similar issues:

• "wsl --import" should include regular user setup, and not default to root user. (#4999), similarity score: 0.77

Closed similar issues:

• Imported distro doesn't run with a default user and interim write permission issues in /mnt/c/Users/$me/ folders (#4268), similarity score: 0.77
• After distro has been imported from backup it opens with root user (#7884), similarity score: 0.73
• WSL2 as the Factory-Default when importing a WSL2 exported Distro (#10158), similarity score: 0.71
• Exported and imported wsl instances boot to root. (#9684), similarity score: 0.70

Note: You can give me feedback by thumbs upping or thumbs downing this comment.

[garysassano]

/feature

You should be able to export and import a WSL2 image along with its settings bundled together.

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

Found '/feature', adding tag 'feature'