IMPORTANT: As of 13.05.2023 the WSL2 IP seems to no longer change on restart so this tool should no longer be needed.

The WSLW instance has an IP that changes on every boot up. This is a tool that can be used to automatically update the hosts file on Windows with the WSL2 IP.

The server (server.py) should run on the Windows machine. On WSL startup, you can start client.py inside WSL to send a message to the server containing the WSL IP. When the server receives the message, it updates all the lines in the Windows hosts file that contain '# WSL' by replacing the first word (the IP) (e.g. 172.29.249.42 mysite.local # WSL)

Python on both Windows and the WSL instance.

1. Make sure that all the lines in the hosts file have one IP per line and end with # WSL

172.29.249.42 mysite.local # WSL

2. Copy the server.py file into server.pyw
3. Create a Windows Task Scheduler task that starts server.pyw with admin privileges on Windows startup
4. On WSL startup, run python client.py inside the WSL instance