How to launch WSL as if I've logged in? - bash

Question

I have a WSL Ubuntu distro that I've set up so that when I login 4 services start working, including a web API that I can test via Swagger to verify it is up and working.
I'm at the point where what I want to do now is start WSL via a script - that is, launch my distro, have all of the services start, and do it from Python. The problem is I cannot even figure out the correct syntax to get WSL to start from PowerShell in a manner where my services start.
Side note: "services" != systemctl (or similar) calls, but just executing bash CLI commands from either my .bashrc or .profile at login.
I've put the commands to execute in .profile & .bashrc. I've configured it both for root execution and non-root user execution. I've taken the commands out of those 2 files and put it into a script in the Windows file system that I pass in on the start of wsl. And I've put that shell script in the WSL file system as well. Nothing seems to work, and sometimes the distro starts and then stops after about 30 seconds.
Some of the PS CLI commands I've tried:
Start-Job -ScriptBlock{ wsl -d distro -u root }
Start-Job -ScriptBlock{ wsl -d distro -u root 'bash -i -l -c /root/bin/start.sh'
Start-Job -ScriptBlock{ wsl -d distro -u root 'bash -i -l -c .\start.sh'
wsl -d distro -u root -- bash -i -l -c /root/bin/start.sh
wsl -d distro -u root -- bash -i -l -c .\start.sh
wsl -d distro -u root -- /root/bin/start.sh
Permutations of the above that I've tried: replace root with my default login, and turning all of the Start-Job bash options into a comma-separated list of single-quoted strings (Ex: 'bash', '-i', '-l', ... ). Nothing I launch from the CLI will allow me access to the web API that is supposed to be hosted on my distro.
Any advice on what to try next?

Answer 1

Not necessarily an answer here as much as troubleshooting tips which will hopefully lead to an answer:
First, most of the forms that you are using seem to be correct. The only ones that absolutely shouldn't work are those that attempt to run the script from the Windows filesystem.
Make sure that you have a shebang line starting your script. I'm assuming you do, but other readers may come across this as well. For the moment, try this form:
#!/usr/bin/env -S bash -li
That's going to have the same effect as the bash -li you tried -- It will source both both interactive startup files such as ~/.bashrc as well as login profiles such as ~/.bash_profile (and /etc/profile.d/*, etc.).
Note that preferably, you won't need the -li. Best practice would be to move anything necessary for the services over from the startup scripts to your start.sh script, and avoid parsing the profile and rc. I need to go update some of my answers, since I just realized I've been guilty of giving some potentially bad advice ...
Specifically, though, I'm wondering if your interactive Bash config has something truly, well, "interactive" in it that might be preventing the automatic running of the script itself. Again, best practice would be for ~/.bashrc to only hold configuration that is needed for interactive shell sessions.
Make sure the script is set as executable (chmod +x start.sh). Again, I'm assuming this is the case for you.
With a shebang line and an executable script, use something like:
wsl -d distro -u root -e /root/bin/start.sh
The -e tells WSL to launch the script directly. Since it has a shebang line, it will be parsed by Bash. Most of the other forms you use above actually run Bash twice - Once when launching WSL and another when it finds the shebang line in the script.
Try some basic troubleshooting for your script like:
Add set -x to the top (right under the shebang line) to turn on script debugging.
Add a ps -efH at the end to show the processes that are running when the script completes
If needed, resort to quick-and-dirty echo statements to show where things have progressed in the script.
I'm hopeful that the above will at least show you the problem, but if not, add the debugging info that you gain from this to your question, and we can troubleshoot further.