Connect from WSL2 to a Windows Service

Recently, while doing some experimentation with MongoDB I noticed that my Spring app would no longer connect to mongo with the old WSL1 configuration. After some digging I was able to reconnect my app running in WSL2 to the Mongo service running on the Windows side. The following steps should get packets flowing:

1. Allow packets through the firewall by firing up a Powershell console and issuing:

   • New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "MongoDB from WSL2" -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (WSL)" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 27017 -Action Allow

2. Reconfigure Mongo to listen for requests on all interfaces, as this is just for local development, by editing the mongod.cfg line:

   • bindIp: 0.0.0.0

3. Update the spring application.properties to read something like:

   • spring.data.mongodb.uri=mongodb://${MONGO_HOST}:27017/
   • where MONGO_HOST is a combination of the strings echo $NAME and .local
   • ex. my_pc.local

Afterwards, your application should connect and you’re back in business.

References

• Stack Overflow
• Nakurai Codes