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I have a remote dedicated server from Hetzner which you can usually only install Linux on, because I haven't paid the ridiculous 25 euros/month for Windows. However, they have KVM access and you can mount a .iso file, but it's buggy and not straightforward. The only part of the KVM which does not work properly is the ISO mounting and drive redirection. The keyboard and mouse works okay, so if I can get the server to boot into the Windows installer, it's easy to complete the process. I've asked support about the mounting problem and they said they "don't support the .iso mounting function of the KVM", and I'm on my own. So my only option is to install Linux, boot it up, then install Windows from right within Linux.

I do not want to dual-boot; I want to replace the Linux OS with Windows Server 2012 R2. I want to get rid of GRUB and all signs of a Linux filesystem. I do not care about preserving my old partitions or data. Is it possible to do this kind of installation?

hammereditor
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  • If your provider does not agree with your requirements you should change your provider. All "unsupported" workarounds are messy. – deagh Aug 31 '14 at 07:15
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about how to violate licensing terms and Your hosting company's EULA. – HopelessN00b Sep 02 '14 at 02:42
  • My hosting provider's EULA does not say anywhere that you cannot install for free the same operating system which the provider sells. – hammereditor Sep 02 '14 at 19:03
  • Here is how you can do this: http://putshello.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/hetzner-how-to-install-windows-on-linux-poc/ – user337085 Oct 09 '14 at 05:51

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I'm sure that extra cost includes the price of the Windows license. If you purchased a Windows license elsewhere, and it is valid for this server, you are of course allowed to install it. But don't expect Hetzner to offer any Windows-specific support, since I guess part of that extra cost is to cover for those extra hours of support needed for servers running Windows.

What you can do is to netboot the server with the Linux rescue system. Using that rescue system you can transfer a disk image to the harddisk on the server. Linux doesn't care what is inside that disk image. So it doesn't matter if what you transfer is a Linux install or a Windows install.

You of course need to prepare the image you want to install. But the point is that you do that locally rather than on the server itself.

kasperd
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  • I'm getting the error "chroot: failed to run command '/bin/bash': No such file or directory". – hammereditor Aug 31 '14 at 18:00
  • @hammereditor At what point er you getting that error? The steps I mentioned do not involve any `chroot` calls. – kasperd Aug 31 '14 at 18:02
  • http://i.imgur.com/Q5qYZsI.png. The installimage script tried to install SSH. – hammereditor Aug 31 '14 at 18:04
  • Oh wait, I see what you mean now. Your method doesn't involve the installimage script. What do you mean by preparing the image? Do I need to insert an "autounattend.xml" file into the ISO? Also, where do I save the ISO to on the server? – hammereditor Aug 31 '14 at 18:13
  • I am suggesting you install Windows on a machine locally, and then after you have installed it, you copy a raw image of the harddisk onto the harddisk on the server. If you only create a small partition at the start of the disk and leave the rest of the disk unpartitioned, then you don't have to copy all of the empty sectors. Once the image is running on the server, you can expand the partition or create another in the rest of the space. – kasperd Aug 31 '14 at 19:49
  • I installed Windows server 2012 R2 on a virtual machine and I want to use a Linux live CD to create the raw image. What tool should I use to create it? Also, how do I apply the disk image to the machine I want to install Windows on? – hammereditor Sep 02 '14 at 19:00
  • @hammereditor If you installed it on a virtual machine, the virtual harddisk is presumably already in a file. What format is that file in? – kasperd Sep 02 '14 at 21:03
  • A Virtualbox VDI file. But I'm trying to install it on a non-virtualized machine. – hammereditor Sep 02 '14 at 21:11
  • @hammereditor So, what you are looking for now is a tool, which can copy a VDI image to a physical disk. My first search on Google for such a tool gave me this: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52155#p238947 – kasperd Sep 02 '14 at 21:17
  • @hammereditor How large is the VDI file? If the VDI file is larger than the amount of RAM on the target machine, installing it may be a bit more tricky, but still doable. – kasperd Sep 02 '14 at 21:23
  • The dedicated server has 16 GB of RAM and the virtual disk's size is 13 GB. So I assume I boot the server up with Hetzner's rescue system (which does not boot off the local disk), download the VDI file on the dedicated server, use the VDI extractor tool to save it to the local disk, and reboot. Is that correct? – hammereditor Sep 02 '14 at 21:54
  • @hammereditor Yep, that's what you need to do. The rescue image runs just fine on vhosts with only 0.5GB of RAM. So rescue image + 13GB of VDI file should fit just fine in 16GB of RAM. – kasperd Sep 02 '14 at 22:06
  • Okay I'm going to try it now. – hammereditor Sep 02 '14 at 22:11
  • @hammereditor That's what I would expect it to. But I don't know that particular virtual disk format, and neither do I know that extraction tool. I can't give you any definitive answers about that tool. – kasperd Sep 02 '14 at 22:13
  • While compiling vddi.c: I get this error: "vddi.c:90:10: error: 'SIGINT' undeclared (first use in this function)". If I comment out line 90, I get an error while running it: "long is not 4 bytes long". I'm installing the .vdi on a 64-bit Linux system. I guess I'm out of luck here. It's time to either pay Hetzner to install the .iso or move to a different provider. – hammereditor Sep 03 '14 at 00:36
  • @hammereditor The compile error is probably due to a missing `#include ` line. Maybe it works if you compile it on a 32 bit system and use a 32 bit rescue system. (If you create a statically linked executable on a 32 bit system, it should also run on the 64 bit rescue system.) – kasperd Sep 03 '14 at 07:58
  • I give up with this method of extracting the VDI. I'm currently trying a new method of making a bootable UDF partition on the hard disk, extracting the Windows installation disc to it, and configuring GRUB to boot from that partition. If this works, I will make a tutorial on it somewhere. – hammereditor Sep 03 '14 at 20:55