Update /mnt

[strarsis]

• Your Windows build number: (Type ver at a Windows Command Prompt)
  Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063]

• What you're doing and what's happening: (Copy&paste specific commands and their output, or include screen shots)

ls /mnt

• What's wrong / what should be happening instead:
  /mnt still contains outdated drive letter folders, newly connected drive not listed

When connecting/disconnecting/changing drives (e.g. external drive via USB3),
the /mnt directory is not updated, the old drive letters are still listed.
Also, trying to access the drive letter folder of a now non-existing drive results
in error ('argument not valid').

It would be great if changes to drives are reflected by /mnt automatically or
at least a command provided/documented that can be used to trigger an update.
Currently I have to open a new bash session to have /mnt updated.

[sunjoong]

When connecting/disconnecting/changing drives (e.g. external drive via USB3),
the /mnt directory is not updated, the old drive letters are still listed.

@strarsis - You look like to use the current public release of WSL and drives you mentioned above seem not to be the fixed ones. I think your drivers don't satisfy the first requirement from below quote from #1079 (comment);

1. The drive must be a fixed drive (your drives satisfy this requirement)
2. The drive must be formatted to NTFS (your drives to not satisfy this requirement).

#891 looks very similar to yours. The last comment of that issue, they mentioned about 16176, not 15063; 16176 is the insider preview builds of WSL, not a public release you're using on.

Also, trying to access the drive letter folder of a now non-existing drive results
in error ('argument not valid').

On 16176, I heard you could access "external drive via USB3" like E: drive after

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/e
$ sudo mount -t drvfs E: /mnt/e

[strarsis]

Thanks for your answer!
The drives in question (which aren't updated) are NTFS formatted drives.
They are "fixed" as being normal HDDs, but they are connected over USB3 and
disconnected/reconnected while using Windows/Bash on Windows.

[sunjoong]

@strarsis - Haha... well... It looks like there are... confusion between "fixed" or "removable" :).

[rodrymbo]

I can usually get my USB3 and Veracrypt drives connected if I refrain from loading any bash window until after they are mounted in Windows. And there they are... So that might be a workaround.

Getting them to update in the WSL environment when you connect or disconnect in Windows seems to be a problem.

There's some capability newly added where you can use mount; that might be helpful.

[benhillis]

If you'd like to see which drives are currently mounted in your WSL instance a better approach would be to read the /proc/mounts file.

benhill@BENHILL-DELL:~$ cat /proc/mounts
rootfs / lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
root /root lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
home /home lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
data /data lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
cache /cache lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
mnt /mnt lxfs rw,noatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime 0 0
none /dev tmpfs rw,noatime,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,noatime 0 0
none /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,noexec,noatime,mode=755 0 0
none /run/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime 0 0
none /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime 0 0
none /run/user tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,mode=755 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noatime 0 0
C: /mnt/c drvfs rw,noatime 0 0
D: /mnt/d drvfs rw,noatime 0 0
S: /mnt/s drvfs rw,noatime 0 0