VS Code connect to WSL Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, fail with error: Could not fetch remote environment

Question

A few days ago I was working just fine with VS Code connected to WSL Ubuntu 20.04, then I did some updating on WSL, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and VS Code and now I can not connect to WSL 20.04, and I always got those two messages, even when no folder/workspace is selected/open.

Could not fetch remote environment

Failed to connect to the remote extension host server (Error: Connection error: Unauthorized client refused.)

When I try to open a folder it shows the folder structure but it always said that: The path does not exists. And does not show any file in it but I can follow the folder structure up and down just fine.

And on the other hand if I launch WSL with an older Ubuntu 18.04 distro, it works just fine.

I imagine there is some security setting or access list that is wrong, but I can not figure it out, and web searching has not help either.

Any idea what to do to get it working again ?.

Saurav · Answer 1 · 2021-07-07T17:00:05.860

41

I had the same error. And solved it by just shutting down the wsl using command

wsl --shutdown

edited Jul 07 '21 at 17:00

answered Jan 23 '21 at 09:20

Saurav

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13

4

Well, that did not work in my case. Even restarting the computer did not solved anything. – Luis Carlos Burgos Jan 25 '21 at 11:26
This worked for me and then I followed the wsl --shutdown command with the command wsl --update. – Joe Hunt Mar 07 '23 at 11:13
worked here. wsl --shutdown followed by wsl to start the os again. – Alexander Higgins Jun 06 '23 at 03:26
this worked and then I needed to reinstall the WSL extension. :) – The BrownBatman Jun 26 '23 at 02:36

tallwithknees · Answer 2 · 2020-12-27T20:58:47.807

9

Seems things got messed up with the update. Fixed it by reinstalling the Remote WSL extension: ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl and reloading as you will be instructed to do.

Before this though, I deleted (rm -rf) the contents of /home/<your_username>/.vscode-server/ bin/ and data/

edited Dec 27 '20 at 20:58

answered Dec 27 '20 at 16:44

tallwithknees

151
1
7

2

The removal of previous .vscode* directories is the most likely solution for this issue. – Luis Carlos Burgos Jan 25 '21 at 11:31
tried all the proposals, but nothing worked. also reinstalled the remote extensions and rm the .vscode-server as here mentioned without success. but after reseting this extension "ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack" to an older version and updating the extension, it worked again. – user2405095 Dec 15 '21 at 20:49

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 18 '21 at 01:53

4

Another (additional) symptom to check: Can WSL connect to the internet (eg via apt update)?

I had compressed my AppData folder, including C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Local\Temp and this somehow broke the connection between WSL and the outer world. Uncompressing the Temp folder solved the problem for me.

answered Mar 18 '21 at 01:53

Sören Köhler

41
2

Search for the `%temp%` directory, go to properties -> general -> advanced -> uncheck compress contents to save disk space. I also needed a system restart but after that, it was working. – MKrup Jul 01 '21 at 09:02

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 13 '21 at 08:27

4

Lowering down the version of Remote WSL extension: ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl worked out for me.There might be some issues with the latest version.

answered Jul 13 '21 at 08:27

Sanchit Kashyap

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Worked for me, as well. "Visual Studio Code Remote - WSL" version 0.58.4 did not work for me. 0.85.3 works for me. – Dirk R Oct 29 '21 at 15:11

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 23 '22 at 14:16

3

What worked for me on Win10:

opens Ubuntu CLI -> type in code .

It'll download the VSCode server and then open VSCode itself with no errors.

I tried the same on CMD or Powershell but it didn't work.

answered Nov 23 '22 at 14:16

Luis Felipe

148
9

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 25 '21 at 18:03

1

I had the same issue, after updating the version(1.52.1). I did uninstall the ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl and installed it again and shutdown the WSL and close the vscode. Then started the WSL and open the VS-code again solved the issue.

answered Jan 25 '21 at 18:03

Vishnu KR

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 30 '23 at 11:06

I've tried these methods but it doesn't work:

wsl --shutdown
Reinstall VScode
Remove .vscode-server in WSL

Finally I found the problem, the problem was with the latest version of the WSL extension, downgrading the WSL extension worked for me.

I downgraded the extension version from v0.79.5 to 0.79.4, and after reloading the window everything was back to normal.

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 19 '20 at 17:27

Just in case somebody else run into this problem. The way I solved was to remove all the .vscode* folders/files on the WSL filesystem. Apparently something got screw up on the upgrade.

I have not test it fully, because I moved to directly using a remote ssh agent on the Test system. But it seems to work, as I can now open the wsl window and it does not report any error.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 22 '23 at 04:08

I am not sure if you have read the official documentation of using WSL with VS code https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl

We need to run the command code . in the folder we want to open from the WSL terminal. Then it installs the vs code server on WSL.

At least in my case, vs code server was not installed.

score 0 · Answer 10 · edited May 19 '23 at 08:17

0

sudo apt update

shoud work fine.

edited May 19 '23 at 08:17

Moritz Ringler

9,772
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answered May 18 '23 at 19:16

Yonas Neghusse

1

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 18 '23 at 08:11

0

I ran to the same problem today, my solution was to rollback to previous VScode version. I know there might be multiple root causes, this is one of the them.

answered Jul 18 '23 at 08:11

Xiang ZHU

365
2
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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 29 '23 at 14:51

powershell script that helps

# Restart LxssManager service
Restart-Service -Name LxssManager -force

# Shutdown WSL
wsl --shutdown

# Define the file paths to delete
$lockedDirectoriesPath = "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Docker\locked-directories"
$settingsJsonPath = "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Docker\settings.json"

# Delete the files if they exist
if (Test-Path $lockedDirectoriesPath) {
    Remove-Item -Path $lockedDirectoriesPath -Force
}

if (Test-Path $settingsJsonPath) {
    Remove-Item -Path $settingsJsonPath -Force
}

# Check if Docker Desktop process is running
$dockerProcess = Get-Process -Name "Docker Desktop" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if ($dockerProcess) {
    # Terminate Docker Desktop Windows process
    Stop-Process -Name "Docker Desktop" -Force
}

# Start Docker Desktop app
Start-Process -FilePath "C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\Docker Desktop.exe"

score -3 · Answer 13 · answered Nov 04 '21 at 03:26

-3

Same problem, just quite the proxy software (Charles etc.) and restart the vscode, it will work fine

answered Nov 04 '21 at 03:26

limi58

1
2

In my case there was no proxy software, just WSL and VSC with a bunch of extensions. – Luis Carlos Burgos Nov 05 '21 at 08:17
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VS Code connect to WSL Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, fail with error: Could not fetch remote environment

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