Connecting to WSL kernel does not properly update path

[Arturtozzi]

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

Description of the Issue

When trying to connect Spyder in Windows to a remote kernel in WSL, an error message is given.

Additionally, it is possible to connect to the kernel using W:/home/username/remotemachine.json, but running a file from the project folder reverts the Spyder working directory from W:\home\username\Project to W:\home\username\, thus the path is wrong and it is not possible to load my modules.

Version

• Spyder version: 6.1.3 (standalone)
• Python version: 3.12.11 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.15.15
• PyQt5 version: 5.15.11
• Operating System: Windows-11-10.0.26200-SP0

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Spyder in Windows
2. Create a project for the WSL folder (mapped to W)
3. Create an environment in WSL using Miniconda
4. Activate the environment and start a Spyder kernel using the instructions from the FAQ: https://docs.spyder-ide.org/current/faq.html
5. Connecting to the kernel works, but returns this error message.

Traceback

Exception in comms call set_configuration:
  File "/home/artto16/miniconda3/envs/spyder-env_GA_ML/lib/python3.13/site-packages/spyder_kernels/comms/commbase.py", line 362, in _handle_remote_call
    return_value = self._remote_callback(
  File "/home/artto16/miniconda3/envs/spyder-env_GA_ML/lib/python3.13/site-packages/spyder_kernels/comms/frontendcomm.py", line 213, in _remote_callback
    return super(FrontendComm, self)._remote_callback(
  File "/home/artto16/miniconda3/envs/spyder-env_GA_ML/lib/python3.13/site-packages/spyder_kernels/comms/commbase.py", line 376, in _remote_callback
    return self._remote_call_handlers[call_name](
  File "/home/artto16/miniconda3/envs/spyder-env_GA_ML/lib/python3.13/site-packages/spyder_kernels/console/kernel.py", line 651, in set_configuration
    os.chdir(value)
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

Versions

• Spyder version: 6.1.3 (standalone)
• Python version: 3.12.11 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.15.15
• PyQt5 version: 5.15.11
• Operating System: Windows-11-10.0.26200-SP0

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
aiohttp >=3.11.2                                                  :  3.13.3 (OK)
asyncssh >=2.14.0,<3.0.0                                          :  2.21.1 (OK)
atomicwrites >=1.2.0                                              :  1.4.1 (OK)
bcrypt >=4.3.0                                                    :  5.0.0 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                                                   :  5.2.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0                                               :  3.1.2 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0                                              :  2.6.0 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111                                       :  20241021 (OK)
github >=2.3.0                                                    :  2.8.1 (OK)
importlib_metadata >=4.6.0                                        :  8.7.0 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2                                              :  3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=8.15.0,<10.0.0,!=8.17.1,!=9.1.0,!=9.2.0,!=9.3.0,!=9.4.0 :  9.10.0 (OK)
ipython_pygments_lexers >=1.0                                     :  1.1.1 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2,<0.20.0                                             :  0.19.2 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7                                                   :  1.2.1 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0                                                :  4.26.0 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0                                                  :  25.7.0 (OK)
markdown_it >=3.0.0                                               :  4.0.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                                                   :  7.17.0 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0                                                  :  1.10.0 (OK)
packaging >=20.0                                                  :  26.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0,<0.9.0                                              :  0.8.6 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                                                   :  4.9.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4                                                 :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                                                      :  7.2.2 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                                                    :  2.19.2 (OK)
pylint >=3.1,<5                                                   :  4.0.4 (OK)
pylint_venv >=3.0.2                                               :  3.0.4 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0                                               :  0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.14.0,<1.15.0                                            :  1.14.0 (OK)
pylsp_black >=2.0.0,<3.0.0                                        :  2.0.0 (OK)
pylsp_ruff >=2.3.0,<3.0.0                                         :  2.3.0 (OK)
pyuca >=1.2                                                       :  1.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.2.0,<3.3.0                                         :  3.2.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2                                                 :  0.2.4 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.4.1,<1.5.0                                          :  1.4.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.7.1,<5.8.0                                          :  5.7.1 (OK)
qtpy >=2.4.0                                                      :  2.4.3 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7                                                     :  1.4.1 (OK)
sphinx >=7.2.0                                                    :  9.1.0 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=3.1.3,<3.2.0                                     :  3.1.3 (OK)
superqt >=0.6.2,<1.0.0                                            :  0.7.8 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0                                              :  4.6.2 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1                                               :  0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3                                                 :  6.0.0 (OK)
yarl >=1.9.4                                                      :  1.22.0 (OK)
zmq >=24.0.0                                                      :  27.1.0 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                                                     :  3.2.4 (OK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0                                                :  3.10.8 (OK)
numpy >=1.7                                                       :  2.4.2 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1                                                    :  3.0.0 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                                                    :  1.17.0 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3                                                     :  1.14.0 (OK)

[ccordoba12]

Hey @Arturtozzi, thanks for reporting. This is a use case we haven't considered, i.e. connecting Spyder to an external WSL kernel that uses a mapped Windows drive.

Instead, you should connect to it through SSH to prevent the problems you reported. For that you need to:

• Install an SSH server in WSL (the package in both Fedora and Ubuntu is called openssh-server).
• Start the service with sudo systemctl start sshd. If you want to start it automatically at boot, you need to also run sudo systemctl enable sshd.
• In Spyder, go to the menu Consoles > Connect to existing kernel, enable the checkbox called This is a remote kernel (via SSH) and introduce your credentials.

Let us know if that works for you.

[Arturtozzi]

Sorry, I accidentally clicked the close issue button.

Hi @ccordoba12, thank you for the instructions. I had to follow a slightly different process, but it seems to work now. systemctl throws an error in WSL regarding needing systemd, but the following works:

1. After installing the openssh-server, start the SSH service using sudo service ssh start. To have it start automatically every time, I edited /etc/wsl.conf to include command = service ssh start. More information here.
2. Start Ubuntu in WSL, activate my environment, then run python -m spyder_kernels.console --matplotlib="inline" --ip=127.0.0.1 -f=~/remotemachine.json & to start the kernel
3. Connect to the kernel following your instructions using SSH. Hostname: 127.0.0.1 worked for me.

This works without raising an error, but my Spyder project is in home/user/Projects/project_123. If I open this Spyder project, the working directory stays as /home/user. I could overcome this by setting up run commands for new consoles:

4. In Spyder, go to the menu Tools > Preferences > IPython console > Startup and in the Run code part, add the following line import os; os.chdir('/home/user/Projects/project_123').

This works for me as I am working on a single project. I am unsure if there is a way to automatically update the working directory for different projects. Changing the location of the .json file did not change anything.

[ccordoba12]

This works without raising an error, but my Spyder project is in home/user/Projects/project_123. If I open this Spyder project, the working directory stays as /home/user.

That's because Spyder doesn't automatically change the current working directory to a specific location, unless it's instructed to do it (as you did in step 4.).

This works for me as I am working on a single project. I am unsure if there is a way to automatically update the working directory for different projects.

Unfortunately, that's not possible right now. But we're working to add the ability to create and work with remote Spyder projects (i.e. projects in a machine you're connected to through SSH). Then the current working directory will be set according to the project's directory.

That functionality will arrive in our 6.2.0 version, to be released during the second half of the year.