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#1 2009-04-07 08:16:22

thetrivialstuff
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Registered: 2006-05-10
Posts: 191

an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

A while ago, I found myself getting frustrated for the nth time with a remote Windows server that I had no physical access to. At least, none convenient -- it was several hundred kilometres away. No one there was savvy enough (or even available) to help convert it to Linux, so I was pretty much stuck with Windows XP up there.

Unless, I thought to myself, there was some way to convert a remote Windows system to Linux, using only remote desktop (no KVM unfortunately). I didn't bother at the time, but right now I've got a similar problem: my laptop has no CD drive and it's too old to know how to USB boot.

So here's what I've come up with:

1. set up a virtual machine (in vmware, virtualbox, whatever)
2. tell the VM to use the real hard drive as its hard drive
3. make some unpartitioned space (via partition magic or qtparted to resize some partitions if necessary)

- DANGER! don't let the VM boot from the real hard drive while the real OS is running! -

4. download the install ISO and tell the VM to use that as its CD drive and boot from it

Now, assuming the VM has network access, you should be able to install linux in the unpartitioned space. After that's done, set the new /boot partition as the active one, pray that you got the kernel settings right first try, and reboot wink  (Might want to add a grub entry for Windows as well, just in case...)

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#2 2009-04-07 10:33:04

Dieter@be
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-11-05
Posts: 2,000
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Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

Your idea is not so bad.  It's pretty much your only option given all the constraints.
Note that with a distro like Arch or Gentoo you don't need the VM. you can run the installer from any shell (so I guess cygwin would work).  Though the VM is useful if you want to test bootup smile


< Daenyth> and he works prolifically
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#3 2009-04-07 12:57:32

jelly
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From: /dev/null
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 714

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

can't you install arch from a pxe boot? ( no experiences myself)

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#4 2009-04-07 17:40:33

thetrivialstuff
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Registered: 2006-05-10
Posts: 191

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

I didn't know cygwin supported linux filesystems and could do mounting -- I haven't used it in several years though. Good to learn, if that's true smile

I've never worked with PXE boot myself either, though this laptop does support it so it would probably work (if I had another machine to be the host, right?)

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#5 2009-04-07 19:22:16

Dieter@be
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-11-05
Posts: 2,000
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Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

thetrivialstuff wrote:

I didn't know cygwin supported linux filesystems and could do mounting -- I haven't used it in several years though. Good to learn, if that's true smile

ugh I must have been daydreaming when I wrote that.  Then again I never used cygwin so I don't know exactly what it can and can't.  maybe with colinux you could immediately install a Linux distro from a windoze environment. not sure, just thinking out loud.


< Daenyth> and he works prolifically
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#6 2009-04-07 19:26:17

brisbin33
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From: boston, ma
Registered: 2008-07-24
Posts: 1,796
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Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

you could maybe mount an ubuntu iso, use that wubi installer from within windoze, then you've atleast got a sane linux environment to move to arch from.

edit, scratch that.  been a while.  the wubi installer just lets you play with ubuntu inside windoze, you can't actually install from it can you?

Last edited by brisbin33 (2009-04-07 19:29:38)

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#7 2009-04-07 20:00:44

Mr Green
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From: U.K.
Registered: 2003-12-21
Posts: 5,891
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Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

depends on your hardware, network install sounds the best option ..... getting it to work is another matter


Mr Green

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#8 2009-04-07 20:37:35

Arkane
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From: Switzerland
Registered: 2008-02-18
Posts: 263

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

brisbin33 wrote:

you could maybe mount an ubuntu iso, use that wubi installer from within windoze, then you've atleast got a sane linux environment to move to arch from.

edit, scratch that.  been a while.  the wubi installer just lets you play with ubuntu inside windoze, you can't actually install from it can you?

If I understand it correctly, then Wubi installs a fully functional Linux that simply stores its disk image in a file and is bootstrapped by the beginning of the Windows boot process. AFAIK it's able to access all hardware normally (except for suspend-to-disk).

Unfortunately this means it wouldn't be useable in the OP's case (running Wubi requires rebooting and selecting a boot option).

Last edited by Arkane (2009-04-07 20:40:22)


What does not kill you will hurt a lot.

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#9 2009-04-08 21:45:47

kanim
Member
Registered: 2007-05-14
Posts: 104

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

Unfortunately this means it wouldn't be useable in the OP's case (running Wubi requires rebooting and selecting a boot option).

this is not true, atleast he could edit his boot.ini so its boot ubuntu automatically wanst there a similar tool for arch...and some other distros?? so you could install arch from windows but on real partition... dunno

edit:
just found it

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=37602

Last edited by kanim (2009-04-08 21:48:01)

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#10 2009-05-12 19:53:16

azraeldiekatze
Member
Registered: 2009-05-12
Posts: 4

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

Hi there.

I just found this thread too interesting not to reply.

I have done similar as suggested, and it worked fine for me. I installed Arch on an absolutely headless laptop (no display, no mouse, no keyboard, no touchpad, pretty much only a mainboard with a harddrive and an ethernet card). Here I installed Arch in a VM, then connected the HDD via USB and copied everything. It worked, but i had to change some stuff like UUIDs in the fstab, since the physical HDD of course had others than the virtual one. In addition, i had to add my ethernet card module to the module-array in rc.conf, because of course i could not use hwdetect since the hardware was rather different. After booting the old laptop, i could connect via ssh (which had to be configured when still in the VM).

On the machine I use right now, I installed the 64-Bit version of Arch inside a VM and then copied it to the physical HDD by mounting it in the VM as well (via the  "VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk" command, see "9.10.2. Access to individual physical hard disk partitions" in Virtualbox's help). At that time I actually used the same drive for my real OS and inside the VM. It worked, given I did not try to use the SATA-controller for the rawvmdk. After changing a few things in GRUB, i could boot my new 64-Bit OS without problems.

So I think it is absolutely possible too migrate from Windows too Linux that way, but care should be taken when setting UUIDs, partition-infos in GRUB and configuring the right modules, especially the networking modules when you have no physical access to the machine. I guess you could just skip the step with copying everything and just install on a rawvmdk. But then you would have to use the same HDD for the real and the virtual machine for a rather long time.

So if you really try this, could you share your experience with it?

Katze

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#11 2009-05-13 02:50:15

thetrivialstuff
Member
Registered: 2006-05-10
Posts: 191

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

azraeldiekatze wrote:

So I think it is absolutely possible too migrate from Windows too Linux that way, but care should be taken when setting UUIDs, partition-infos in GRUB and configuring the right modules, especially the networking modules when you have no physical access to the machine. I guess you could just skip the step with copying everything and just install on a rawvmdk. But then you would have to use the same HDD for the real and the virtual machine for a rather long time.

So if you really try this, could you share your experience with it?

Katze

I haven't tried doing this to a remote machine over the network, but it did succeed very well on my laptop. My initial post was written after the fact, actually; I just speculated how the steps would go for doing it over remote desktop.

I used device names rather than GUID's in my grub config and fstab, and I did do everything in place on the one hard drive (no partition copying) so I didn't need to do any adjusting.

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#12 2009-05-14 14:00:35

azraeldiekatze
Member
Registered: 2009-05-12
Posts: 4

Re: an extraordinarily bad idea (but perhaps useful)

Using the drive directly probably is the best idea anyway, i did not go this way because i did not know about this possibility at that time. Plus, i could start setting up an Arch-system without even have to bother where the drive actually was (My chaos is perfect, i just have a problem with tidiness).

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