How do I set up Gurobi in WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)?

The most accessible options are to connect to a floating token server or to use our Web License Service. Since Gurobi 10.0, you can also use WLS licenses running in WSL2.

To use a machine-bound individual license (e.g. free academic license), please follow these instructions:
The Windows Subsystem for Linux, specifically version 2, does not have a persistent network address. This means that a new MAC address will be assigned to the network adapter after every reboot of the Windows host machine. Gurobi uses these network adapters to identify the machine and validate the license, so a simple reboot of the machine may render the license invalid.

Until there is a proper solution to have a static and persistent MAC address in WSL2 natively, you may use the approach suggested in WSL issue #5352:

You need to add these lines to the .bashrc of your WSL user: 

# assign a persistent MAC address for adpater bond0 and rename it eth1
mac=1a:2b:3c:4d:5e:6f
if ! ip link show | grep -q $mac; then
  sudo ip link add bond0 type bond  # only if no bond0 adapter present already
  sudo ip link set dev bond0 down 
  sudo ip link set dev bond0 address $mac 
  sudo ip link set dev bond0 name eth1 
  sudo ip link set dev eth1 up 
fi

If you already have a bond0 adapter (check with grbprobe adapters), you can use this MAC address to make this address persistent via the mac variable in the above script. In that case, you can also remove the first line in the if-block that adds the bond0 adapter.

After a reboot, the eth1 address will stay the same and you can use it to bind the Gurobi license to your WSL by following these steps:

1. get a new academic license
2. run grbprobe --adapter eth1 --output wsl2-hostinfo.txt to store the eth1 info in the file wsl2-hostinfo.txt
3. run grbgetkey xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx --input wsl2-hostinfo.txt using your personal license key and the hostinfo file.

Please note that you will need to enter your sudo password when starting the WSL for the first time to apply the network changes defined in your .bashrc file.