If you're a Windows user using WSL2, then you will run into the need of setting up WSL2 with a VPN. This guide will walk you through the steps needed to connect WSL2 to the internet through the VPN so you can access these resources.

Steps we will take:

1. Connect to your VPN on Windows

2. Find the VPN DNS Addresses

3. Edit the WSL2 Configuration

4. Edit the WSL2 DNS Configuration

5. Shutdown and Relaunch WSL2

6. (Optional) Setup Proxy

Step 1: Connect to your VPN on Windows

On Windows, connect to whichever VPN you wish to use.

Step 2: Find the VPN DNS Addresses

Open the Command Prompt (not WSL2) and type ipconfig /all. This will list all your network settings. Scroll and look for the VPN you connected to. This will have a property called DNS Servers with 1 or more IP addresses. These IPs are the IP addresses of the VPN. Copy all the IP addresses listed.

Step 3: Edit the WSL2 Configuration

Open WSL2 and edit the file /etc/wsl.conf by replacing all its contents with the following 2 lines. This will disable automatically generating the /etc/resolv.conf to prevent overwriting our settings performed in step 4.

# /etc/wsl.conf

[network]
generateResolvConf = false

Step 4: Edit the WSL2 DNS Configuration

On WSL2, edit the file /etc/resolv.conf by replacing all its contents with the following:

# /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver <VPN DNS address here. one per line>
# example:
# nameserver 147.152.22.68
# nameserver 147.152.22.4

You may encounter issues editing /etc/resolv.conf due to it being a symlink (fake file, pointing to a real file). If this is the case, you may simply delete /etc/resolv.conf and create it manually with the same contents in step 4.

Step 5: Shutdown and Relaunch WSL2

Shutdown WSL2 by opening Command Prompt on Windows and typing wsl --shutdown. Then, relaunch WSL2 and run cat /etc/wsl.conf and cat /etc/resolv.conf. Both files should contain the contents we saved. If not, then WSL2 will have overwritten them, which will be an issue.

Step 6: Setup Proxy

To connect through a proxy, add the following line to your environment file (such as .bashrc or .zshrc):

# ~/.bashrc

export HTTPS_PROXY="<proxy_url>:<port>"

🙌🎉Done! You should now be able to access the internet through your chosen VPN.