Rebooting WSL in Windows 1803

Solution 1:

Yes, it is.

As an Administrator restart the windows Service "LxssManager" on Windows 10. This does a clean boot of the WSL. The services in the Linux Subsystem - for example xrdp - must be restarted if not enabled for autostart.

Solution 2:

A Powershell solution

Get-Service LxssManager | Restart-Service

Solution 3:

WIN+R -> services.msc
Find LxssManager
Right-click -> Restart

Solution 4:

As the other answers mention, specifically for windows 1803, the following should work from powershell or cmd:

net stop LxssManager

As highlighted by @Ramhound, only for newer versions, which have wsl 2, you can also run this from powershell or cmd:

shutdown all instances:

wsl.exe --shutdown

shutdown a specific instance (e.g. Ubuntu):

wsl.exe -t Ubuntu

to show the current list of instances:

wsl.exe -l