Using Yarp throughout WSL2

[sgiraz]

Hi guys,

Recently I tried almost all the installation methods to work with Yarp.
Among all of them, I found the WSL2 way pretty interesting but limited for some scenarios.

Before discussing the limitations, let me describe the installation procedure that anyone can follow to work with Yarp using WSL2.

Installation

1. Install WSL2 following either the standard way or better using the preview version for Windows 11.
2. Install the Ubuntu distro on WSL2
3. Download and Install everything you need to work with Yarp. In my case, I need to work with yarprobotinterface and embObjMotionControl device, so I had to install the following projects:

• Ycm
• Yarp
• icub-firmware-shared
• icub-main

4. As of now, we had internet available (by default) to download and build the projects above, but now it's time to activate yarpserver and run the yarprobotinterface. To do that you need to change the IP address inside your WSL2 environment in order to be able to communicate with your device throughout an ETH Physical Network Interface.

Network Setup

A method I found is using the Hyper-V:

1. First of all, you have to set the IP Address of your ETH adapter. In my case, I set IPv4 to 10.0.1.104.

2. List your host adapter with Powershell with administrative privileges:

Get-NetAdapter

In my case, it was Ethernet.

3. List all VM Switches and, if there are, remove all of them which are bridged with your host adapter:

Get-VMSwitch
Remove-NetAdapter <your-adapter-name> *

4. Now reconfigure VMSwtich WSL for bridging with your host adapter:

Set-VMSwitch -Name WSL -NetAdapterName Ethernet

The VMSwitch automatic will change the type from internal to external

5. Next, enter in your WSL2 and create /etc/wsl.conf file and write in it the following:

[network]
generateResolvConf = false
[boot]
command = /bin/bash /root/scripts/network.sh

Create /root/scripts/network.sh with:

#!/bin/bash

defroute=$(ip r |grep default |wc -l)
ip a flush dev eth0
ip addr add 10.0.1.104/24 dev eth0

if [ $defroute == 1 ] then
    ip r delete default
fi

Make this script executable:

chmod +x /root/scripts/network.sh

6. Finally, restart your WSL2 with PowerShell.

wsl --shutdown

Now if you enter your WSL2 environment and check the IP Address of your eth interface, it should be the one you set in point 5: 10.0.1.104, and you would have to be able to ping every device in the subnet (e.g. 10.0.1.1).

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Limitations

If you choose to develop using WSL2, to the best of my knowledge, you have to consider that there is only one Network Interface available.
This is critical when you need both an internet connection and communication with your ETH device.