can't launch kex on wsl2 : error 10061

Question

I recently had to disable-reenable my WSL2 on windows (because i needed to launch a VM) and after restarting, it seems like my kex stopped working.

When I simply type "kex", I get the typical "Error connecting to the KeX server". A small window opens and says "unable to connect to socket: Connection refused (10061)".

I'm used to temporary errors with kex that just require kex --stop or kex kill or similar to be fixed, but none of those worked. When I do that however, I get (2 or 4 times) the following message : tigervncserver: No matching VNC server running for this user! Doing it from my $HOME or with sudo didn't work either.

So, is there any way to fix this problem? All my packages are up-to-date.

Answer 1

first check if there is dbus exist or not so run this command sudo apt install dbus-x11

run those command also vncserver -kill , kex kill ,kex stop

now run vncserver -localhost no

and then to start just run kex command

Answer 2

I've tried every solution I've found on the Internet so far, but nothing has worked.  My solution: I looked at the status via kex status:

/usr/bin/kex: line 266: tasklist.exe: command not found

Solution was found at Microsoft Docs ^{(also available in Russian)}.

I've added /mnt/c/Windows/system32 to $PATH.

Also I've created file .wslconfig in my User folder and added these lines:

[wsl2]
localhostForwarding=true

Then I restarted the computer and it worked.

My current $PATH looks like this:

/usr/local/sbin:
/usr/local/bin:
/usr/sbin:
/usr/bin:
/sbin:
/bin:
/usr/games:
/usr/local/games:
/usr/lib/wsl/lib:
/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Common Files/Oracle/Java/javapath:
/mnt/c/Program Files/Python39/Scripts/:
/mnt/c/Program Files/Python39/:
/mnt/c/Windows/system32:
/mnt/c/Windows:
/mnt/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:
/mnt/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:
/mnt/c/Windows/System32/OpenSSH/:
/mnt/c/Program Files/Git/cmd:

Answer 3

First, make sure that WSL is version 2. If it isn't download and run the update. Then verify it. Then update kali to wsl 2. then verify that in command prompt: wsl -l -v. It should show kali installed and version 2. Then install win-kex. It will take a while. Then start it up in kali with ken --win -s. I found the seamless version didn't work. The window version did work.

This is on 2 Dell Windows 10 Pro machines.