cpio: cap_set_file failed - Operation not supported about wsl-distribution-switcher HOT 1 OPEN

Hi,

Capabilities are not supported under WSL at this time. See my discussion here: microsoft/WSL#1303 (comment)

Regardless, the application should work properly as long as it has enough privileges to perform whatever it is trying to do, without needing to resort to capabilities. If you're running as root, you won't have problems. If you aren't, you'll have to make sure to track down what permissions it needs and to grant it accordingly, if possible.

As for the installer failing, you could use a nasty workaround. That is, compile a library with a no-op cap_set_file function, and load it with LD_PRELOAD.

echo -e "#include <sys/capability.h>\nint cap_set_file(const char *path_p, cap_t cap_p){return 0;}" > fakecap.c
gcc fakecap.c -shared -fPIC -o fakecap.so

Note: for sys/capability.h you will need libcap-dev on Debian. most likely libcap-devel on CentOS, but I haven't tested the latter.

You can check whether the library is working by trying to use setcap:

$ setcap CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE=+eip test.txt
Failed to set capabilities on file `test.txt' (Operation not supported)
The value of the capability argument is not permitted for a file. Or the file is not a regular (non-symlink) file
$ LD_PRELOAD=./fakecap.so setcap CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE=+eip test.txt; echo $?
0

As such, for yum you'd use it with:

$ LD_PRELOAD=./fakecap.so yum install iputils

from wsl-distribution-switcher.