Prep the WSL2 Linux Instance

In Windows Terminal, in the drop-down list next to the tab, a Linux penguin icon named Debian now shows up. This is the shell to your Linux instance running in WSL 2.

Install the following software

apt-get install openssh-server g++ gdb make ninja-build rsync zip

and ensure SSH service is running

service ssh start

which should tell you

[ ok ] Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.

SSH into the Linux Instance from Cygwin

When we installed some software in the previous section we had installed the OpenSSH Server and started it. Now configure it by editing /etc/ssh/sshdconfig_, where you change the existing strings to this

Port 2222
PasswordAuthentication yes

and start/restart the SSH server

sudo service ssh restart

and see

[ ok ] Restarting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.

We need the Linux instance's IP address, so we find that out by

ip addr list

that outputs the eth0 section, a relevant snippet from which, on my system, reads

4: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:15:5d:e8:cd:90 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.129.170/20 brd 192.168.143.255 scope global eth0

from where I pick the IP address: 192.168.129.170

In a Cygwin terminal connect to the WSL-Linux using

ssh rup@192.168.140.68 -p 2222

which prompts for a password and let's you in. You must have been prompted for a new username when you had installed the Linux distro from Microsoft Store at the time of setting up WSL 2.

I haven't yet been able to make public key authentication work.