WSL2 + Ubuntu 22.04.1: xdg-open: no method available for opening "https://www...."

[ramonduraes]

Version

Microsoft Windows [´veersion 10.0.19042.1706]

WSL Version

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.10.102.1

Distro Version

Ubuntu 22.04.1

Other Software

Try
xdg-open https://microsoft.com

result
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links2: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: elinks: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: lynx: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: w3m: not found
xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://microsoft.com'

Repro Steps

Try
xdg-open https://microsoft.com

Expected Behavior

Open windows browser

Actual Behavior

/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links2: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: elinks: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: lynx: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: w3m: not found
xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://microsoft.com'

Diagnostic Logs

/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links2: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: elinks: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: lynx: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: w3m: not found
xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://microsoft.com'

[benhillis]

I think you may have to configure xdg-open to do this, we don't do this by default.

[sabbour]

az login was working for me before, but now I'm facing this issue.

[fghamsary]

I have the same issue, just installed a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 with service and GUI enabled, and the interop with browser is not working anymore on this version, there is something wired going on when using systemd with new WSL and GUI

[fghamsary]

Came accros this one: #8795
It seems like on eariler versions there was a package installed by default wslu which is not available by default on 22.04.
It had a wslview shell command which did the work, so by installing it, you can have the functionality back, but not sure of the drawbacks.

[AdamGlass]

wslu works. This really feels like a problem WSL should own -- installing the component, ensuring that the user knows the component could be installed, or forcing it to be installed due to some dependency.

it's not even mentioned here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install.

(AdamGlassMS too)

[lgmorand]

Same issue here. the WSL 22.04 was working fine this morning. I did a apt-upgrade and then, the console is now broken when trying to do "az login"

I did "sudo apt install wslu" like mentioned and it seems to fix it. pretty weird what broke it

[belainehi]

I had a similar issue, considering if installing one of the "not found" packages would help. Haven't found a solution yet.

[Biswa96]

Try to add an web browser path with BROWSER environment variable before launching xdg-open. For example, let assume Firefox is installed in Windows as C:\Firefox\firefox.exe. Then set the environment variable as export BROWSER=/mnt/c/Firefox/firefox.exe and run xdg-open as usual.

wslpath can also help to covert the path style.

Source: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/tree/scripts/xdg-open.in

[AndreasNasman]

@Biswa96 Thanks for the workaround! 👍

I had to create a symlink with ln -s /mnt/c/path/to/browser.exe and then set export BROWSER=~/path/to/symlink as my browser is installed in a directory with spaces (Program Files (86)), which xdg-open can't handle.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/715404/571729

[LucianoCrocco]

@Biswa96 Thanks for the workaround! 👍

I had to create a symlink with ln -s /mnt/c/path/to/browser.exe and then set export BROWSER=~/path/to/symlink as my browser is installed in a directory with spaces (Program Files (86)), which xdg-open can't handle. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/715404/571729

Thanks both of you, it worked having 401 error.

[jiasli]

I am the developer of Azure CLI authentication.

Because of this change, Python's built-in module webbrowser stops working on Ubuntu 22.04 in WSL:

$ python -c "import webbrowser; print(webbrowser.open('https://login.microsoftonline.com/'))"
True
(py310) user2@DESKTOP-A79F1:~$ /usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: x-www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: firefox: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: iceweasel: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: seamonkey: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: mozilla: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: epiphany: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: konqueror: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: chromium: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: chromium-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: google-chrome: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links2: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: elinks: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: links: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: lynx: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: w3m: not found
xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://login.microsoftonline.com/'

This affects MSAL's PublicClientApplication.acquire_token_interactive: https://github.com/AzureAD/microsoft-authentication-library-for-python/blob/64141cacdb4ea3a02a2b3cb45bc8fb3be4f93f36/msal/oauth2cli/authcode.py#L58

Then affects Azure CLI's az login: https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/blob/f0c87ca820e0bd3f9dd403ef96c21ed49b734d16/src/azure-cli-core/azure/cli/core/auth/identity.py#L153