Unable to connect adb in wsl2 to windows adb server

Question

My requirement is simple - I wanted to use ADB in wsl2. But there is no USB support in wsl2, so I took help from github issue #4619 and enable access to wsl2 section in Building a react native app in WSL2. Yet nothing works. Following are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded sdk platform tools from here for windows. Ran adb --version which is Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
2. Downloaded the same for linux for wsl and unzipped and checked the version to be the same. (Also made changes to .bashrc to have it point to adb where I unzipped)
3. Connected mobile with usb which had the USB and wireless debugging option on.
4. Ran adb devices in windows to check if I could see my mobile being listed and it was. Then ran adb kill-server to proceed with the next steps.
5. Did the same in wsl2 to see if the device is listed or not , but it wasn't. So I ran adb kill-server to proceed with the next steps.
6. Tried #4619 and Building a react native app in WSL2 but to no avail.

Please help.

Answer 1

To access device from WSL, you need to run adb on Windows and then redirect the adb commands from WSL to the windows adb server.

From the guide that you linked:

• https://gist.github.com/bergmannjg/461958db03c6ae41a66d264ae6504ade#start-adb-server-in-windows - this starts a server in Windows
• https://gist.github.com/bergmannjg/461958db03c6ae41a66d264ae6504ade#enable-access-to-adb-server-from-wsl2 - this prepares WSL to connect to Windows

Attention: do not stop the windows adb server!! You need it!!