Hi all, I'll preface my question with that I'm not very linux savvy or WSL2 savvy. 🙂 Been trying to get Rancher-desktop (v1.8.2 originally via chocolatey, which then auto-updated to 19.2). I recently tried on a fresh VM in Azure and downloaded via winget 1.20.0. I installed WSL2 via Terminal as Admin. Downloaded Ubuntu 24.0.4.1 LTS (Installed it via the Microsoft Store.) Started that and setup the user for it. (No other software such as k3s, docker, containerd etc... was installed) vanilla installation. The Rancher-Desktop Installation doesn't mention anything like that so I didn't do it.) Ran WSL -d Ubuntu-24.04.1 to start the distro prior to installing Rancher-desktop. Installed Rancher-desktop 1.20.0 via winget using the following command: winget install SUSE.RancherDesktop --version 1.20.0 --silent --skip-dependencies --source winget . I used --skip-dependencies because it checks that WSL2 is installed and it already is. Running it without I get an error 1603 and the installation fails. Not prompted for a reboot so I don't reboot after the installation is complete. Start rancher-desktop. It takes a few moments which I expect at which time the two rancher-desktop distros are loaded. Once loaded I check in Terminal that the two rancher distros are running, by type wsl -l -v and they are both running. I receive the following error message (See image below) "Error: Timed out after waiting for /run/wsl-init.pid: 30 sec." This is where my I get lost in WSL. 🙂 But here's a clip of the log that relates to wsl-init failing: 2025-09-12T214101.818Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec rm -f /usr/local/openresty/nginx/conf/allowed-images.conf 2025-09-12T214101.973Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec rm -f \usr\local\openresty\nginx\conf\image-allow-list.conf 2025-09-12T214102.128Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec wslpath -a -u C:\Users\LOCAL_~1.B\Temp\rd-wsl-exec-BfA8Q0\wsl-exec 2025-09-12T214102.292Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec busybox cp /mnt/c/Users/LOCAL_~1.B/Temp/rd-wsl-exec-BfA8Q0/wsl-exec /usr/local/bin/wsl-exec 2025-09-12T214102.461Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec busybox chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/wsl-exec 2025-09-12T214102.627Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec rm -f /run/wsl-init.pid 2025-09-12T214102.777Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec wslpath -a -u C:\Users\LOCAL_~1.B\Temp\rd-wsl-init-asved1\wsl-init 2025-09-12T214102.939Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec busybox cp /mnt/c/Users/LOCAL_~1.B/Temp/rd-wsl-init-asved1/wsl-init /usr/local/bin/wsl-init 2025-09-12T214103.096Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec busybox chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/wsl-init 2025-09-12T214103.261Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214104.457Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214105.878Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214107.049Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214108.233Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214109.447Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214110.629Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214111.798Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214112.979Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214114.161Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214115.357Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214116.552Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214117.711Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214118.871Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214120.045Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214121.204Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214122.370Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214123.546Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214124.719Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214125.885Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214127.044Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214128.207Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214129.373Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214130.533Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214131.748Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214132.907Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214134.071Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec cat /run/wsl-init.pid cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T214833.052Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec wsl-service --ifstarted rd-openresty stop cat: can't open '/run/wsl-init.pid': No such file or directory 2025-09-12T215011.534Z: Running: wsl.exe --list --quiet --running 2025-09-12T215011.622Z: Running: wsl.exe --distribution rancher-desktop --exec /usr/bin/killall /usr/local/bin/network-setup killall: /usr/local/bin/network-setup: no process killed 2025-09-12T215019.013Z: Running: wsl.exe --list --quiet --running 2025-09-12T215019.112Z: Running: wsl.exe --list --verbose 2025-09-12T215019.192Z: Running: wsl.exe --terminate rancher-desktop The operation completed successfully. In the wsl.log I got the following: 2025-09-12T214008.018Z: Registered distributions: Ubuntu-24.04 2025-09-12T214008.364Z: Registered distributions: Ubuntu-24.04 2025-09-12T214017.755Z: Registered distributions: Ubuntu-24.04,rancher-desktop 2025-09-12T214017.933Z: Registered distributions: Ubuntu-24.04,rancher-desktop 2025-09-12T214017.934Z: Creating initial data distribution... 2025-09-12T214049.580Z: Did not find a valid mount, mounting /mnt/wsl/rancher-desktop/run/data 2025-09-12T214055.855Z: WSL: executing: cat /root/.docker/config.json: Error: wsl.exe exited with code 1 2025-09-12T214055.967Z: WSL: executing: busybox readlink -f /etc/docker/daemon.json: Error: wsl.exe exited with code 1 2025-09-12T214103.507Z: /sbin/init exited with status 1 signal null 2025-09-12T214834.022Z: WSL: executing: wsl-service --ifstarted rd-openresty stop: Error: wsl.exe exited with code 1 In the wsl-init.log I only have the following entries: 2025-09-15T124954.785Z: + NETWORK_SETUP_LOG=/mnt/c/Users/Zabchuk.B/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/logs/network-setup.log + VM_SWITCH_LOG=/mnt/c/Users/Zabchuk.B/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/logs/vm-switch.log + '[' 420 -ne 1 ] + exec /usr/local/bin/network-setup --logfile /mnt/c/Users/Zabchuk.B/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/logs/network-setup.log --vm-switch-path /usr/local/bin/vm-switch --vm-switch-logfile /mnt/c/Users/Zabchuk.B/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/logs/vm-switch.log --unshare-arg /usr/local/bin/wsl-init 2025-09-15T124954.957Z: time="2025-09-15T084954-04:00" level=fatal msg="setting logger's output file failed: open /mnt/c/Users/Zabchuk.B/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/logs/network-setup.log: no such file or directory" Any assistance on next steps would be greatly appreciated.

so ubuntu is not needed for RD. it has its own distro and integrates w windows as a host. you can configure other distros to use RD as their docker backend, but its not critical path.