Create a full Windows VM on a remote server with no GUI / Window manager

Hi folks
Not so easy but I;ve got this worked out.

Tested first with just creating a VM with a Macrium stand alone ISO - and being able to boot via the cockpit console from a remote Windows machine.

Here's so far : (note you get a bigger image via the expand icon in the application when you connect to the VM this way). Note there's no GUI of any kind on the remote server. That's the whole point of this exercise. !!!




Now I'll do the full windows system with standard logon

If anybody is interested I'll post the steps -- it's not as simple as one might think but it's nothing like as complex as those posts on reddit etc seem to imply (and most of them don't usually work). You need to also add your user to 3 groups and create appropriate storage volumes. None of those rediculous posts ever explain how to do this stuff - usually giving convoluted complex command lists that invariablr don't work either.

Seasoned admins might think this is pretty basic but I know there's loads of ordinary users who would like "to have a go" at this as it's all 100% Free standard software (assuming you have a valid Windows 11 license).

The system hosting the VM is a basic Fedora 42 server - with no workststion GUI installed on it so you can't use Virtual machine manager.
I like the idea of a basic server being able to host a load of VM's -but until now haven't had time.

If anybody's interested I'll post the steps to get a Windows 11 system up and running -- (Fedora 41 server is the same but I wnated to see if this still works in pre-release Fedora 42 (download from the nightly builds) .

Cheers
jimbo

@jimbo45
this maybe of interest as i have got Win 11 24H2 26100.3194 running in Gnome boxes on Debian Testing.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

@jimbo45
this maybe of interest as i have got Win 11 24H2 26100.3194 running in Gnome boxes on Debian Testing.

Debian 'Trixie' Testing

just downloaded the net installer ISO for Debian 'Trixie' Testing and have it running in Virtual Box. Debian have re-started and now allowing a direct install of testing/sid. net install only. i am using the Cinnamon desktop in full dark mode, its beautiful. all the files, directories and...

www.elevenforum.com

best of luck, Steve ..

Click to expand...

Hi there
Easy enough if your Linux Distro already has a GUI since you can install the graphical Virtual Machine manager for managing and creating KVM/QEMU virtual machines (including Windows which runs perfectly-- I'm trying to do it from a remote machine with a browser to the server which has no GUI. Debian is a great distro BTW - usually unbelievably stable and makes for a great server and NAS system. Once you've got the VM up and running one can connect either through a browser as previous screenshots or connect from remote system via RDP if from Windows or via something like freerdp from Linux. However later kernels on wayland (not X11) don't support RDP (currently) so it's a bit of a "wait and see" from developers to see how that "circle is squared".

I'll have a go with this too -- great TRIXIE has a small netinst system and see what I can come up with -- the main difference I think is in KVM/QEMU for the "libvirt" service in Debian (not sure about Trixie) is that the classical single daemon (libvirtd) is used for virtualisation while Fedora releases use the new modular daemons and don't use X11 but wayland so you need the cockpit installed on the server and connect to it via a browser. Doing the whole thing via text only and SSH is a pain -- cockpit simplifies it immensly especially as you can run the thing from a Windows system running any browser.

In any case on either system - to run / create virtual machines under KVM/QEMU (Hypervisor equivalent roughly to Windows HYPER-V - very fast, efficient and much more flexible such as dynamic device redirection etc) as a normal user rather than root you need to add your user account to these groups ---libvirt,qemu,kvm (sudo usermod -a -G qemu,kvm,libvirt <userid>).

Using things like vmware workstation or virtual box also have disadvantages -- other than having to use the OS as overhead the VM runs as a task in your address space so when you log off the VM shuts down. On KVM/QEMU the VM runs as a "service" so anybody who has an account on the Windows machine can logon to it and logout without shutting down the VM and they don't actually need to have an account on the host system either.

Anyway here's more info which is reasonably accurate -- with changes in both hardware and software always check though as none of this stuff can be treated as "permanent gospel".


Cheers
jimbo

@XxXxX

Another way -- easier to start with is to have a small portable Linux system with a desktop GUI say on an external NVME device - these are much faster and not much bigger than a USB stick when mounted in a USB3 / USBC enclosure. Just install the virtual machine modules, openssh server , Samba, and the GUI Virtual Machine manager -- then you can create a REMOTE systems Virtual machine (in Virt manager choose new connection, connect via SSH and then create your VM in the normal way just as you would on the local machine).

This is "sort of cheating" but it works. The problem I've found with a purely text approach is that adding multiple CD's or DVD's is tricky as it's hard to find out where the actual Virtual Machine definition(s) are stored. With Virtual machine manager it's easy enough and if you need to add things like physical raw disks you can edit the xml file definition of the VM directly.

RDP from remote Windows if accessing the VM from windows is fine as well as a full screen "console" if accessing Windows VM from a remote linux system.

I'm still going to try the pure text method just for the sake of it though. It must work as 100,000;s of Linux servers world wide host Windows virtual machines of all sorts.


Cheers
jimbo