WSL2 - setup issues with udev rules

[leevhoang]

Description

I had issues setting up the udev rules and compiling/flashing/running a sample Rust embedded program on my WSL2 setup and I figured that filing an issue would help shed some light on the things I went through. The solution I found is at the bottom of this message.

Technical information

OS: Windows 11
WSL: WSL2
Board: BBC Microbit v2

Steps I followed

Here are the steps I went through initially to set up a development environment on WSL2:

1. I followed the instructions in the MB2 Discovery book under Chapter 3 and the Linux section to get the initial libraries set up and copy the rules file into /etc/udev/rules.d. The rules file was called 69-microbit.rules.

2. When I followed the steps under Verify the Installation, I got an error on using the probe-rs list command that said it could not find any debug probes. (No debug probes were found)

3. I followed the instructions from this Microsoft page to install usbipd and attach the MB2 to my computer using a Powershell terminal started as admin. This fixed the probe-rs list issue from Step 2, but not the cargo embed issue in Step 4.

4. I cloned the blinky-rs repository and tried to build/run the code using the command

cargo embed --release

but ran into a new error about a missing probe-rs rule (the same issue happened with cargo embed --target thumbv7em-none-eabihf):

 WARN probe_rs::probe::list::linux: Make sure you have reloaded udev rules after setting everything up
 WARN probe_rs::probe::list::linux: Read more under https://probe.rs/docs/getting-started/probe-setup/
 WARN probe_rs::probe::list::linux: There seems no probe-rs rule to be installed.
 WARN probe_rs::probe::list::linux: Read more under https://probe.rs/docs/getting-started/probe-setup/
 WARN probe_rs::probe::list::linux: If you manage your rules differently, put an empty rule file with 'probe-rs' in the name in /etc/udev/rules.d.
       Error Failed to open the debug probe.

             Caused by:
                 0: The debug probe could not be created.
                 1: The selected USB device could not be opened.

This was despite the fact I copied the rules file from Step 1 into the correct directory (/etc/udev/rules.d).
I tried running the commands

sudo udevadm control --reload
sudo udevadm trigger
adduser <my username> plugdev (It turns out I am already in plugdev)

and neither command fixed the issue.

5. With some help, I reinstalled Rust and the necessary libraries as /root and managed to fix the issue from Step 4, but I learned that installing as /root could break things, so I decided to remove my Rust setup and reinstall without /root permissions. However, I still ran into the issue described in Step 4 until I tried the solution below.

Solution

I ultimately solved the error from Step 4 by copying the rules file from this probe.rs page and placing it inside the /etc/udev/rules.d folder. The file is called 69-probe-rs.rules.

Suggestions

• For WSL2 users, it would be nice to mention that the rules file from this probe.rs page may be needed to fix issues with compiling/flashing/running Rust embedded programs on an MB2 board.