lsmod gives error: "could not get list of modules" on Debian running on WSL

Question

When I run lsmod or sudo lsmod, I get an error that says:

libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:1655 kmod_module_new_from_loaded: could not open /proc/modules: No such file or directory
Error: could not get list of modules: No such file or directory

I searched on a lot of forums but am unable to find a solution for this. I'm running Debian on Windows Subsystem for Linux.

I was recently also trying to edit the sysctl.conf file for the purpose of disabling ipv6. I had added the following lines:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

And when I tried sudo sysctl -p, it returned this error:

sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6: No such file or directory
sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/default/disable_ipv6: No such file or directory
sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/lo/disable_ipv6: No such file or directory

I'm not sure if the above 2 errors are connected. I was trying to run Linux shell on Windows. Any solution to the problem?

Solution

In both cases, you’re trying to interact with the kernel. Any Linux environment running on WSL isn’t running a Linux kernel, it’s running on the Windows kernel; so anything tied to the Linux kernel (including modules and system controls) won’t work.

In the IPv6 case, you need to configure the network using Windows’ tools.

Comments

[Stephen Kitt]

The workaround is to run a full Linux environment, e.g. in a VM. There are some things which you can only do with a Linux kernel, just as there are others you can only do with Windows. You need to use the appropriate tool for your requirements; WSL gives you a Linux user-space on Windows, but it isn’t Linux.