Solving X-Server (WSLg) Issues in WSL: Error: Can't open display: :0

Note#155

notes
Published

2024-05-30

For whatever reason—as usual—, xclip and other program using the X-Server stopped working on my WSL installation. I just got the following error:

Error: Can't open display: :0

Restarting WSL with wsl --shutdown and then started it again temporarily resolved the problem, but opening a tmux session would break it again. I tried the usual Windows shenanigans: check for updates, restart, etc. Nothing worked.

I finally found a hacky solution in a GitHub Gist written by oleksis in one of the GitHub issues of WSLg. The important part for me was this:

Init /tmp/.X11-unix is overwritten by mounts

If you still don’t see socket X0 follow these steps: issuecomment-826039096

To make it work with systemd, create /etc/tmpfiles.d/wslg.conf with following content:

#  This file is part of the debianisation of systemd.
#
#  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
#  under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.

# See tmpfiles.d(5) for details

# Type Path           Mode UID  GID  Age Argument
L+     /tmp/.X11-unix -    -    -    -   /mnt/wslg/.X11-unix