WSL2 Hyper-V Firewall Manager

A Rust desktop application for managing WSL2 Hyper-V firewall rules with a git-like draft/commit workflow and full rollback capability.

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Overview

This application provides a graphical interface to manage Windows Hyper-V firewall rules specifically for WSL2. It uses the Get-NetFirewallHyperVRule, New-NetFirewallHyperVRule, and Remove-NetFirewallHyperVRule PowerShell cmdlets under the hood.

Why

Running servers inside WSL2 is easy. Accessing them from outside your machine is not.

WSL2 relies on Hyper-V networking, which means exposing ports often requires manual firewall configuration using PowerShell commands — and those settings are fragile and repetitive.

This project was built to make WSL2 port exposure trivial: just click, enter, and your WSL2 service is reachable from the outside.

Features

Core Features

• Visual Rule Management - View and manage all Hyper-V firewall rules for WSL2
• Git-like Safe Workflow - Stage changes (add/remove/modify) before committing them
• Snapshot History - Automatic snapshots before each commit with full rollback capability
• UAC Elevation on Demand - Read rules without admin rights; elevation requested only for mutations
• WSL Config Validation - Checks for networkingMode=mirrored in .wslconfig

Auto-Discover

• WSL Status Monitoring - Real-time indicator showing whether WSL is running
• Automatic Port Discovery - Detects listening TCP ports inside WSL using lsof
• One-Click Rule Creation - Suggests firewall rules for discovered ports with a single click to add
• Smart Filtering - Skips ports that already have rules or were dismissed

Requirements

• Windows 11 with WSL2 installed (Version 22H2 or higher)
• WSL2 configured with mirrored networking mode

WSL2 Configuration

This application requires WSL2 mirrored networking mode. Add to ~/.wslconfig:

[wsl2]
networkingMode=mirrored

Then restart WSL: wsl --shutdown

Installation

Download the latest release from the Releases page.

Building from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ssut/wsl2-hyperv-firewall-manager
cd wsl2-hyperv-firewall-manager

# Build in release mode
cargo build --release

# The binary will be at target/release/wsl2-hyperv-firewall-manager.exe

Usage

1. Launch the application - Rules are loaded automatically (no admin required for viewing)
2. Stage changes - Add, remove, or modify rules; changes are staged but not applied
3. Commit changes - Click "Commit" to apply all staged changes (requires admin elevation)
4. Rollback if needed - Use the History panel to restore any previous snapshot

Auto-Discover Ports

1. Start WSL and run your services (e.g., python -m http.server 8000)
2. The status bar shows WSL status with a green indicator when running
3. Auto-discover activates automatically when WSL starts
4. Floating notifications appear for newly detected ports
5. Click "Add" to stage a firewall rule, or dismiss to ignore

Architecture

Technology Stack

Component	Technology	Version
UI Framework	gpui + gpui-component	0.2.2 / 0.5.0
PowerShell Integration	rustclr	0.3.4
State Persistence	sled	0.34
Serialization	serde + serde_json	1.x
Async Runtime	tokio	1.x
Error Handling	anyhow + thiserror	1.x / 2.x

License

MIT License