Linux subsystem files cannot be created, modified, or deleted using Windows tools.

This spring, Microsoft began integrating the Linux toolkit into its new Windows 10 operating system. The first step was to include Ubuntu and Bash toolkit in build 14316 . The essence of the update was to add the WSL layer , which translated the Linux system calls into the Windows system calls, which allows you to deploy the full-fledged Ubuntu Linux toolkit in the main Windows environment without emulation and virtualization.

Yesterday, Microsoft published an entry in the official blog urging developers not to change, create or delete Linux files using Windows tools or applications, as this would damage the distribution with the need to reinstall it later.

At the beginning of a blog post on MSDN, there is a big warning:

Under no circumstances, DO NOT create and / or modify Linux files using Windows, be it applications, tools, scripts, consoles, etc.
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Creating / modifying Linux files from under Windows is most likely to result in data corruption and / or damage to the Linux environment, which will later require reinstalling the distribution!

We are talking about any files or folders that are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\lxss in the Linux subsystem in Windows 10 .

There is a similar, judging by the information in the blog, because of the logic of the WSL.

If WSL cannot find the Linux metadata file for this file, it is concluded that the file is either damaged or deleted, or you are unable to open or correctly read the file, which leads to crashes. In some cases, deleted files are recognized as “damaged”.

“File metadata (extensions, creation date, and other information) are configured differently in Linux and Windows. For this reason, Windows software and tools are not able to correctly save and write Linux metadata files (in principle, they should not be able to do this). In addition, some Windows software often does not edit the source file, but creates a copy of it. At the same time, the source file is deleted and replaced with another, and the metadata is lost, ”the blog says.

This problem is solved by storing the necessary files, the work with which is performed by means of Windows, within the file system of the OS from Microsoft, and Linux files are not modified, created or deleted using Windows tools.