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Managing WSL Lifecycle Operations

Shutting Down and Rebooting WSL​

Here are the essential commands to manage the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lifecycle:

Shutting Down WSL​

To completely shut down a specific WSL distribution:

wsl --terminate <distro-name>

To shut down all running WSL distributions:

wsl --shutdown

Restarting WSL​

There is no direct "restart" command for WSL. Instead, you need to shut it down first, then start it again:

  1. Shut down WSL:

    wsl --shutdown

  2. Start your distribution again:

    wsl -d <distro-name>

Viewing Running Distributions​

To see which WSL distributions are currently running:

wsl --list --running

To see all installed distributions:

wsl --list --verbose

Stopping Services Within WSL​

To properly stop services inside your WSL distribution before shutting down:

# Stop a specific service
sudo service <service-name> stop

# Examples for common services
sudo service apache2 stop
sudo service nginx stop
sudo service mysql stop
sudo service postgresql stop
sudo service ssh stop

This ensures your services are cleanly terminated before shutting down the WSL instance.