The instrumentation diagnosed the cleanNode reentry bug that's since been fixed (Terminal queueMicrotask, SortableWorkspace/LocalWorkspace undefined guards). Keeping it around imposes significant main-thread cost on busy subtrees: wraps every owner with accessor/Proxy traps, captures a fresh Error().stack on every owned mutation, and pushes to a ring buffer. On a ~40k-owner graph after a server switch this saturated the main thread and tripped Electron's unresponsive watchdog a few minutes in. Drop the file and its import.
Verified with live probes: 'wsl -d Ubuntu-24.04 --user root -- echo OK' succeeds on a distro whose registry DefaultUid is still 0 (OOBE never ran). The prior hang symptom was from invoking wsl WITHOUT --user when DefaultUid=0, which triggers the interactive 'Create a default UNIX user account' prompt. With --user root explicit in wslArgs the OOBE hook is skipped and resolveWslOpencode finds /root/.opencode/bin/opencode etc. Remove the overly aggressive first-run gate from spawnWslSidecar; the registry probe helpers stay in wsl.ts for future diagnostic use. 20s timeout + failure logging remain as safety nets for true wsl.exe wedges.
The PowerShell HKCU Registry-provider enumeration returned nothing when spawned by Electron's main process (both Ubuntu-24.04 and Debian were reported as 'not installed'), so the first-run gate blocked every distro unconditionally. reg.exe is a native Windows binary with a stable line-oriented output format that works regardless of PS host quirks; parse its 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\\\...\\\\Lxss\\\\{guid}' subkey blocks, pull DistributionName + DefaultUid + State + Version, and rebuild the list.
Reading HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Lxss tells us the DefaultUid for every registered distro without touching wsl.exe. On a freshly installed Ubuntu-24.04 the 'Create a default UNIX user account' prompt never ran and DefaultUid stays 0; every wsl.exe -d <distro> ... invocation in that state silently blocks on stdin forever, even with --user root. checkWslDistroFirstRun reads the registry via powershell, and spawnWslSidecar throws a human-readable error if the distro still needs setup, so the controller marks the server as failed with a clear message instead of hanging. Also emits 'wsl sidecar starting' to main.log for visibility.
Ubuntu-24.04 in the failed first-run state wedges wsl.exe silently - no stdout, no exit. Without a timeout resolveWslOpencode (and any other runWsl call) blocks the sidecar spawn flow forever, which hides the real failure from logs and from the controller's failed runtime state. Add a 20s default ceiling to runCommand; caller can override for long-running jobs (installs).
LukeParkerDev