Cannot debug application using WSL2 and cuda-gdb

Developer Tools CUDA Developer Tools CUDA-GDB
1

I have a Windows machine where I wanted to use cuda-gdb within WSL2 using VS Code. When I launch my application, I am greeted with this:

WARNING: Debug interface is not enabled. Please see https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-gdb/index.html#supported-platforms for more details.

I checked the linked webpage, and can confirm that the registry key exists with the required value.

$ Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\GPUDebugger" -Name "EnableInterface" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object EnableInterface

EnableInterface
---------------
              1

In fact, this was set by default and I didn’t have to modify anything. Additionally, here is what I get for running nvidia-smi within WSL:

Sun Dec 14 10:14:25 2025       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.102                Driver Version: 581.60         CUDA Version: 13.0     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA RTX A1000 6GB Lap...    On  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   36C    P8              6W /   72W |    1902MiB /   6144MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A          101781      C   /Utkarsh                              N/A      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

and this is the Linux kernel I am using:

6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2

I could not find any fixes in the documentation online and other sources. The closest I could find was this post, but it still seems unresolved.

Cuda-gdb can’t step into kernel code in WSL2 - CUDA Developer Tools / CUDA-GDB - NVIDIA Developer Forums

Please let me know if anything else is required to be able to use cuda-gdb with the setup I have.

Thanks and regards,

Utkarsh

2

Hi, @utkarsh.verma

Sorry for the issue you met.

  1. Are you using Win10 or Win11 ?
  2. Can you please update wsl by “$wsl --update”?
  3. Can you please get latest R590 driver ? We have some fixes there.