WSL/BASH calls from the system command

Hi!

I have some linux software that I run using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that I wish to execute from within MATLAB under Windows 10.

In the windows command prompt I can type, e.g., wsl ls.

But running the same command within MATLAB as

system('wsl ls')

does initally work (in this case shows the content of the folder) but then hangs. No 0 is returned that the command has executed successfully.

Any idea how to solve this?

Answer 1

[Ankur Bose]

Hello All, This was an issue with Windows 10 WSL that has been fixed in Windows 10 Build 17017. See the below link for more information

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/release-notes#build-17017

If you have Windows 10 Build greater than 17017 or Windows 10 April 2018 Update, you should not see this issue.

You can check your windows version by running the command winver

Answer 2

[Matthias Senge]

I have the same problem. My bash skript runs successfully, but no 0 is returned. Any help?

[Hugo Zeberg]

I found a workaround, which is not that pretty but does work.

Call the JAVA runtime directly using

rt = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime();
pr = rt.exec('wsl YOURCOMMAND');
pr.destroy();

[Carlo Monjaraz]

I have the same issue, it requires me to press Enter to finish the command, which of course does not allow to run the scripts completely

Answer 3

[Wei Feng]

I use the following codes to run bash in the MATLAB and it works.

% bashcmd = 'D:\cygwin64\bin\bash.exe -c ';
% bashcmd = 'D:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin\bash.exe -c ';
bashcmd = 'bash -c '; % WSL
runcmd = ['"' cmd '"'];
status = system([bashcmd runcmd]);
if (status ~= 0)
    error(['Run bash cmd error: ' num2str(status)]);
end

The bash can also be Cygwin or MinGW.

[Felicien Bonnefoy]

Thanks for the code, it proved very usefull.

A quick note: Adding also the -i option to the bash function runs it interactively so the ./bashrc file is loaded.