mintty / wsltty

Mintty as a terminal for Bash on Ubuntu on Windows / WSL

Mintty is the Cygwin Terminal, as well as the terminal emulator for MSYS (Msys2, old MSYS).

Overview

For an introduction, features overview, and screenshots, see the Mintty homepage.

For detailed hints and specific issues, see the Wiki.

For comprehensive general documentation, see the manual page.

Bugs and Enhancements

Please report bugs or suggest enhancements via the issue tracker.

Bugs that were reported to the previous repository at Google code before June, 2015, have been migrated here.

• Mind! Before reporting an issue about character interaction with an application, please check the issue also with at least one other terminal (xterm, urxvt), and maybe the Cygwin Console. It may also be useful to get a proper understanding of the rôle of a terminal as explained e.g. in difference between a 'terminal', a 'shell', a 'tty' and a 'console'.

Contribution

If you consider to suggest a patch or contribute to mintty otherwise, discuss your proposal in an issue first, or on the Cygwin mailing list, or with the maintainer.

• Repository policy: No unsolicited pull requests!

wsltty's Issues

Error: could not fork child process: Resource temporarily unavailable (-1)

Hello! I'm getting the following when I attempt to start the process:

Error: could not fork child process: Resource temporarily unavailable (-1).
DLL rebasing may be required. See 'rebaseall / rebase --help'.

Obviously there is no rebase binary packaged with this like Cygwin would typically have. Is there another way to rebase this?

3rd home folder and at a hidden place

It is not an issue but rather some thoughts.
The default location (and I can't see how I can change it from the installer) is the Appdata\Local....
Thats a hidden location and all changes to the home directory like theming is dealing with the Windows Explorer to show this location.
Ubuntu on windows provide a home folder (at a very hidden place), the user folder of Windows is also a "home" folder.
Well I can make a ln to (in my case) /mnt/c/Users/Detlef/AppData/Local/wsltty/home/Detlef/ like wslttyhome. Then I come around with the hidden folder issue.
But for a good integration of linux into Windows I think the binaries of wsltty must be either under Users/Detlef/ ( because it is part of the Windows eco system) or under the linux home folder location.
But in both cases, I think, a good place for the mintty configuration files and folders are in the linux home folder because standard terminal settings under linux are in the home folder.

Maybe it is possible to provide a zip file with as a "portable" Version along with the batch files and some instructions.

Avast is reporting virus infection

Today I installed the version 0.75 and when I started the shell AVAST anti virus software ist reporting:
IDP Generic Infection

Long command causes visual overlap

Just downloaded the mintty terminal for WSL and I like it over the built in one that Windows offers. However, I ran into this little visual bug while typing a long command today. Not sure if it's something on my end or what, just thought this would be the place to put it.

When I type a command longer than say 85% of the window width, the command's text begins to wrap back to the prompt (on the same line) and then proceed to overwrite the letters it runs into. Take a look at the gif below.

Thanks in advance!

Can't save options

When I try to save options in wsltty I get an error

Could not save options to 'C:\Users\pdaniels\AppData\Local\wsltty\c\Users\pdaniels\repos\dotfiles\colors\mintty-themes\SolarizedDark'

I suspect some crosstalk from my pre-existing Cygwin installation.
I have a HOME environment variable defined in Windows which is set to /c/Users/pdaniels.

I have a .minttyrc in there which is symlinked to /c/Users/pdaniels/repos/dotfiles/colors/mintty-themes/SolarizedDark.

configuration files?

So it looks like the .minttyrc file has to be in
%APPDATA%\wsltty\home\USER

whereas the themes etc. must be in the
%APPDATA%\Local\lxss\home\USER\.config\mintty
folder?

A little more description in the README would be helpful here

Running under Administrator - empty console

Any thoughts why can not run wsl from commanlines that are run under Adminstrator?

vs under current user:

HOME folder setting

Where does the HOME environment get set to %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home\%USERNAME% ?

I am running into minor issues now that it is possible to execute windows binaries from WSL. Example: If I start visual studio code from WSL, it inherits the HOME environment, but the windows git it executes expects the HOME to be set to %USERPROFILE% or empty (and then it defaults it to %USERPROFILE), so now this process can't find ssh keys while running git.

Is it possible to unset the wsltty specific HOME environment variable before executing into WSL?

Scrollbar doesn't work

Scrollbar doesn't work tmux

I can only see the last page, can't go back to the previous screen.

Scrolling causes the input ^B to populate, and not scrolling.

UPDATE: Found the solution, added set -g mouse on to your tmux settings `~/tmux.conf``

Failed to save options

I tried to save options, but mintty failed with these messages.

When I create %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home\username , mintty succeed to save options.
I think it is better to create this directory at the time of install.

config file options not being honored

I added a config file to %APPDATA%\wsltty\config that has some color schemes selected, however they're not being loaded at all. The colors are still the default colors.

The command I'm using to run it is %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin\mintty.exe --wsl --configdir="%APPDATA%\wsltty" -o Locale=C -o Charset=UTF-8 /bin/wslbridge -C~ -t /bin/bash

Question: How does this work with the newly release Ubuntu Store version?

While I'm sure it's all of maybe a day old, I thought it'd be worthwhile to ask how this interoperates or will interoperate with the direction that seems to be going with WSL:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/07/10/ubuntu-now-available-from-the-windows-store/

It appears that there's an official Ubuntu install in the Store, with other flavors forthcoming. Additionally, it appears that the plan is to have them run side-by-side or simultaneously.

Most importantly, however, I saw this on the blog post's FAQ:

Q2) Should I continue to run the current/legacy distro or move to the new Store distros
A2) You can continue to run the current/legacy distro, but we do encourage you to move to using the store distro’s as your primary distro’s, because the current/legacy distro will be deprecated at some point.

With the "old" way of starting and installing the WSL subsystem with Ubuntu, how will this tool work? How can I migrate it to use the ubuntu command that appears different/distinct from WSL's bash callout?

terminal hangs sometimes

I was using wsltty and sometimes either after the first command I typed or even a few commands in mintty, the console would freeze when I pressed enter and basic commands like "ls" would freeze.

I removed the .minttyrc file and everything went back to normal I thought, but I later just kept typing "ls" and "make" in a directory without a makefile over and over and eventually the console froze.

A bunch of zsh processes, bash, and wsltty backend processes are growing in my task manager because when it freezes and I close it, it doesn't kill the process

Additional options for installer

Just a couple of options that would be nice!

I'm not a fan of desktop icons or right-click menu items, but diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. It would be nice to be able to choose whether to install those items during setup.

Amazing 3D graphics with dancing dinosaurs and a soundtrack by Sting and the Police during the install would be cool but immaterial to the project, so I don't suggest pursuing those features ;)

Add "open mintty here" to context menu

Hi,

First of all, great project! I love it!

Do you know what I should enter in the registry command in order to add a "Open Mintty here" to the context menu?

I tried %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin\mintty.exe --wsl --configdir="%APPDATA%\wsltty" -o Locale=C -o Charset=UTF-8 /bin/wslbridge -C~ -t /bin/zsh but Windows can't find %LOCALAPPDATA%.

Thanks!

Quentin

Wrong colors

I'm trying out some of the themes from here https://github.com/iamthad/base16-mintty

Colors seem off to me for most of these.

If you check the .pl and .sh files in the colored ls output above they are barely legible against the almost same color background. This is the case for most of the base16 themes.

Ctrl+click can not open correct directory?

When I used ctrl+click to open a folder like /bin, the terminal opened a bin folder in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin" instead of the real bin folder of WSL ("%LOCALAPPDATA%\lxss\rootfs\bin").
A missing path error would be raised when I tried to open /sbin which doesn't exist in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty".
It is a bug of wsltty or I need to change some configuration? Thanks!

wsltty version: 0.7.3
Windows version: 14393.576
mintty was launched by "WSL Bash % in Mintty" shortcut.

Update issues to 0.7.8.1

I am unable to update to the latest version. I am running a standard account and get the following error message:

/bin/wslbridge: Exit 1.
wslbridge error: failed to start backend process

If I try 0.7.8, the wsltty window closes immediately on opening but I am able to install 0.7.7.2 and resume usage.

Interestingly, I get the same error if I install 0.7.7.2 as an administrator and run it as my standard user.

Pageant support

Would be really useful. Initializing ssh-agent inside bash is quite tricky.

Windows Context Menu item... Removal!

Mintty for BASH on WSL installs a not-always-wanted (as in, I never want context menu crap) context menu handler. I can't find it in Regedit to remove it.

I need to know how because I hate having crap in my Explorer menus. Also, no uninstall for minty for Bash on WSL so I can't remove it to eliminate the unwanted menu item.

Text and Font properties crashes when attempting to select font

I am using wsltty 0.7.4 on the latest windows insider preview. When I open the options menu and try to open the font dialog on the text and font properties tab using the select button the terminal crashes. All of the other settings in the option dialog work for me.

Display graphical symbols in terminal

I believe it is not wsltty specific and kins of basic windows terminal issue, but still will ask for it:

This is neovim UI:

Is it possible to have instead of this (questions in squares):

Normal graphical characters as it in mac/linux:

Ctrl+Shift+c/v shortcuts to copy and paste don't worked.

Ctrl/Shift+Ins works but Ctrl+Shift+c/v don't.

Environments

	version
Windows 10 Home	1607
os build	14393.953
wsltty	0.7.5

My .minttyrc: kanonji/dotfile@b8116f4
This is placed to %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home\%USERNAME%\.minttyrc

Notes

I had installed wsltty 0.7.1 at first and have upgraded to 0.7.5 by overwriting install with the installer.
I am not sure wsltty is upgraded or not.

I don't know how to get the version installed. Please tell me how to get that.

Shortcuts not starting bash as login shell

I was trying to see bash was not sourcing the user profile files (~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile). Some poking around:

$ echo $-
himBHs
$ echo $0
/bin/bash

Contrasting with Cygwin (just an example, same result on other unix-y OSes):

$ echo $-
himBHs
$ echo $0
-bash

Unix shells treat a leading dash in argv0 as a signal to be a login shell, and source user profile files.

• Is there a way in the wslbridge command line I can provide an explicit argv0 when running /bin/bash?
• It might make sense for such an argv0 flag to be default in the shortcuts

.minttyrc is being saved in wrong folder (Windows username vs. Linux username)

Yesterday I noticed that when I'm trying to save MinTTY settings it is trying to put .minttyrc in a folder that doesn't match my Linux username. It is using the Windows username which shouldn't be happening.

E.g. it tries to save it in /home/winuser/.minttyrc but it should be saving it in /home/linuxuser/.minttyrc

Sluggishness in 0.7.5

There seems to be a rather noticeable slowdown in v0.7.5 compared to the version before.
I have tried with the same config on both and scrolling a large log file or screen buffer is very laggy/slow now.

About-box shows mintty-version, but not wsltty-version

I can't see which version of WSLTTY I'm using because the About-box in Options only shows the version of MINTTY. I can see the version on the downloaded install package, but I would like to delete that. Now I'm using wsltty-0.7.5-install.exe.

(BTW thanks for making WSLTTY. I'm using it because of Sixel-graphics and better XTerm emulation.)

environment variables to be passed into WSL

• A brief description

/init cmd /C set contains too few environment variables, some softwares run failed, like shutdown. In bash.exe, everything is OK.

$ /init shutdown
The system could not find the environment option that was entered.(203)

$ /init cmd /C 'set COMPUTERNAME=MY-PC & shutdown'
Usage: shutdown ...

And without TMP variable, some softwares run failed.

$ /init cmd /C set
COMSPEC=C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe
PATH=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WBEM;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WINDOWSPOWERSHELL\V1.0;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32;C:\WINDOWS;%LOCALAPPDATA%\MICROSOFT\WINDOWSAPPS;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WBEM;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WINDOWSPOWERSHELL\V1.0;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\mine\app\0misc\bin;C:\Users\goreliu\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps
PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.JS;.WS;.MSC
PROMPT=$P$G
SYSTEMDRIVE=C:
SYSTEMROOT=C:\WINDOWS
WINDIR=C:\WINDOWS

• Your Windows build number

14951.1000

• Steps / All commands required to reproduce the error from a brand new installation

/init shutdown

microsoft/WSL#1257

Version number

Hi.
First let me thank you for all the great work, I just have a little thing to ask.
Could you add the version number "somewhere" ? ... as a comment in the *.bat files would suffice.
So I could easier compare the installed version with the one available on the repo.
Thanks

Windows SmartScreen preventing installer from Running

"Windows protected your PC"
"Windows SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk."
App: wsltty-0.7.5-install.exe
Publisher: Unknown publisher

Installer downloaded from github. Maybe false-positives would be reduced by signing and setting publisher? Also if you could publish the SHA256 of the installer it would be easier to verify it?

Start wsltty terminal in WSL user's home directory and other questions

I modified the shortcut to start in %localappdata%\lxss\home\fpqc, but for some reason this starts wsltty in the root (/) of the lxss installation rather than the user home /home/fpqc.

Also, is there a way to invoke wsltty from the Run (Win+R) dialog?

Lastly, is there any way as of yet to add functionality similar to @xilun 's cbwin, which allows invoking Windows applications from a WSL instance by calling back over tcp? This functionality is nice, since it allows you to do fun things like run powershell and cmd inside of tmux (although I guess since this is using cygwin, we could just use the cygwin version of tmux and load wslbridge from there instead)?

Window stuck always on top

If I press ctrl+[shift]+tab window gets stuck always on top, I have to minimize or close it to view windows behind.

Copy console text in tmux

In tmux I do:
Ctrl+B, then Ctrl + Space I can make a selection (shown on screenshot).

But I don't get how to copy it into a clipboard. Any advice?

Headless and Fullscreen modes

Think would be useful to have headless (without upper title bar) and full screen modes.

wsltty installer 0.7.4 is detected as malware

wsltty installer 0.7.4 is detected as mailicious tool by Symantec.

Risk: WS.Reputation.1

Virus Total report detect a generic malware:

https://www.virustotal.com/es/file/d5facea222e89aa5d240128bcd13cd4fb91c80af78d9890fe3cbc24b49fd6124/analysis/1485994148/

May be a problem with used compiler for mintty/cygwin libraries?

Add to chocolatey or Scoop

Love this tool (mainly for the truecolor support). It would be great if it was listed in one of the package managers (chocolatey or scoop).

Attach interactively to docker container

As the title, Could not attach or exec using --interactive STDIN with error
the input device is not a TTY

Custom icons (specified by -i) don't seem to work

I'm trying to launch wsltty from a cmd.exe window with a custom icon using the -i flag.

When I run
%LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin\mintty.exe --wsl -o Locale=C -o Charset=UTF-8 /bin/wslbridge -t /bin/bash
wsltty seems to work as expected.

When I run
%LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin\mintty.exe --wsl -o Locale=C -o Charset=UTF-8 /bin/wslbridge -t /bin/bash -i C:\Users\andrew\home\Downloads\terminal.ico
a mintty window opens briefly (~1 second) and then disappears, and nothing is printed to the console. The icon in the top-left corner of the window that briefly appears seems to be the default mintty icon, not the custom one I specified or the usual bash.ico that wsltty uses.

I'm on Windows 10 64bit build 14393.576, using wsltty 0.7.3 (mintty 2.7.3).

I have since circumvented the issue by right-clicking on the shortcut wsltty installs, and using Properties->Change Icon to get the icon I want, but I thought this should still work through cmd.exe since this works when I don't pass in all the wsl flags.

how to invoke wsltty in my own .bat to open mintty it in a given dir?

I am trying to create a .bat to basically do the same as going to a given dir in Explorer and running 'WSL in mintty here'.

But no dice, I should be able to find out by looking at what command are inserted in the registry but I'm missing something.

Could you give an example please?

Uninstall option

Any plans to include an uninstaller in order to revert back to default installation?

Add New Fonts

I am trying to figure out how to add new fonts to the font configuration screen. I have installed some new fonts to both windows and lxss but can't see them in the configuration screen. Am I missing something?

Any ways to set zsh as default shell?

I like to use zsh. On ubuntu I can use chsh -s /bin/zsh to set default shell to zsh, but how to set the default shell on wsltty?

wcmd seems not working

Hello,

I've installed wsltty and tried to run wcmd command, but it responded me with

wcmd: connect() failed: Connection refused

Is there any way how to fix it? :)

Provide 64 bit bundle

Due to repeated issues with CygHeap when running 32 bit cygwin components on a 64 bit system I think it would be nice to provide a bundle that is built on 64 bit. This is the error that is asking you to rebaseall as if that is a real fix for anything.

wslbridge is already available for 64 bit and I have manually installed wslbridge in a Cygwin64 installation and have this working with mintty now.

Cygwin seemingly fixed some issue related to this early last year but I have had this issue at least twice the last couple of months. It just sometimes randomly happens on a fresh boot and the only solution is to reboot. With Cygwin64 this isn't an issue.

I have provided a 64 bit bundle here: https://saivert.com/files/wsltty64.zip

Can't save options (0.7.7.1)

This is almost identical to issue #42, but on the latest version 0.7.7.1 with slightly different error:

I've never installed wsltty before, so I just did a fresh install. I then:

• Open a terminal via the auto-created desktop shortcut "WSL Bash ~ in Mintty"
• Click the icon -> Options...
• Modify window size
• Click "Save"

An error window pops up saying "could not save options to.." (see attached). The path it is using is %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home$user.minttyrc

Looking in this directory in Windows there are only two dirs, bin and usr:

... is there some step I missed needing to invoke/setup a user in cygwin so that this home dir is created?

How to update mintty/wsltty?

How do I update mintty, and how do I update wsltty?

If possible, How do I schedule an update check for the two?

Screenshot

Hey guys,

Would you consider adding a screenshot, on the main readme, how it looks? Just one image.

Not sure if this is a useful "issue" - reason being I would like to see how mintty looks on first startup.

Feel free to close this issue at any moment in time.

Error: Could not fork child process

Always worked fine, but this started happening today:

1st Window:
453785 [main] mintty 15304 fork: child -1 - forked process 23852 died unexpectedly, retry 0, exit code 0xC0000142, errno 11

2nd Window:
Error: Could not fork child process: Resource temporarily unavailable (-1). DLL rebasing may be required; see 'rebaseall / rebase --help'.

uninstalled via uninstall.bat, re-installed, problem persists.

Custom opacity value

Think would be useful to have ability to set distinct custom opacity value.

Why my mintty cannot run windows commands

Hey everyone. Im Roy.
I got mintty shell after I installed Github. I didnot install CYGWIN.
If I run mintty from Github which i click 'open git shell', then I can run all windows commands.
If i run mintty by itself, then I cannot use any windows commands, why? It is so weird.
Here is the pic.
http://blog.163.com/dsh808@126/prevPhDownload.do?host=dsh808@126&albumId=310061228&photoId=9790657658
The left side is that i opened by mintty itself, so all windows command cannot use.
The right side is that i opened from Github, all windows commands no problem.
Thanks for any help.
by the way, why I cannot add my pic here??