installing on Ubuntu on WSL1

[pawelk]

I believe the installer is 32-bit, yet WSL1 cannot run 32-bit binaries.

Here is what I get:
./FreeFileSync_11.11_Install.run
-bash: ./FreeFileSync_11.11_Install.run: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

Any workarounds? I cannot switch to WSL2 (or use Linux outside of Windows) for other reasons.

[bgstack15]

I'm intrigued that you want to run this in WSL. Would installing the Windows version of FreeFileSync get you what you want?

If you really insist on installing FreeFileSync in Ubuntu in WSL, you can manually extract the contents of the .run file with 7za and manually set up the related components.

7za x FreeFileSync-11.11_Install.run


I forget exactly what Zenju's got in the .run file nowadays, but I think there was an install shell script inside that, which you can read through and step through to get the file associations, etc.

[pawelk]

Thank you for the 7za solution, I'll try it out.


The reason why I need it on Ubuntu/WSL is twofold:
1. syncing certain files between Ubuntu file system and Windows file system. In WSL1 you should never use Windows mechanisms (so FFS on Windows) to write into Ubuntu FS, it gets corrupted. BTW, I need to do another step of syncing between Windows-side copy and networked computers, which I am unable to do directly from Ubuntu side, so I have FFS installed on the Windows side as well.

2. syncing between Ubuntu file systems and other networked systems which are better accessible from Linux.