Story : Installing WIndows On Mosso RackSpace Cloud With QEMU

Rack space cloud is a very good service with low price. Good customer support, i always got chat session with customer support very soon. They currently provide Linux cloud server only. I am waiting for windows cloud server.

I installed windows 2003 in QEMU , i was not able to Get the KQEMU accelaration layer working. So performance was really poor,


Installation story (Installing 32 bit windows 2003)....


First i created an ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS (hardy) cloud server.

1. Update package list

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

2. Install QEMU

apt-get install qemu

2. Install X Server

aptitude install xorg

3. Redirect X Display to our system

This was the one main problem i faced. I 'X' forwarded the display to windows pc running XMing. It was really slow.. It took abt 50-100MB data transfer to show the initial windows loading screen.. Took long time to display the screen.. So it is impossible to install windows in this way.

I found a solution X11 VNC

4. Install X11 VNC

apt-get install x11vnc

apt-get install xvfb

Create password file


x11vnc -storepasswd

5. Start X11 VNC create option (will automatically create a display)

x11vnc -usepw -create


6. Connect to X11 VNC From windows using TightVNC


7. Download windows 2003 ISO ( i used windows 2003 trial)


8. Create QEMU hdd image file


qemu-img create win2003.img 20G


9.Install windows

Run qemu with win 2003 iso as cdrom

qemu -m 256 -boot d -cdrom win2003.iso -hda win2003.img -localtime



Problems faced


32 bit windows 2003 installation stuck at installing devices screen , but on restarting once it worked fine.


NetWorking


I was not able setup TAP network working. I used user mode networking with port forwarding option

I run this to forward 3389 port for remote desktop , and 80 for IIS

qemu -hda win2003.img -m 256 -localtime -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net user -redir tcp:3389::3389 -redir tcp:80::80



Installing 64 bit Windows 2003


The qemu version we get with apt-get will not work with win 2003 64
I got stuck "Starting windows" while installing
http://qemu-forum.ipi.fi/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4906


I installed QEMU 0.90 from source , we need gcc 3.x for doing that,ubuntu comes with gcc 4.x so install gcc 3.4

sudo apt-get install gcc-3.4 g++-3.4

export CC=gcc-3.4

Download qemu 0.9.0 source , then compile & install


wget http://tx-us.lunar-linux.org/lunar/cache/qemu-0.9.0.tar.gz

tar xzf qemu-0.9.0.tar.gz

cd qemu-0.9.0

./configure
make
make install

I got an error while comiling qemu

Looking for gcc 3.x ./configure: 372: Syntax error: Bad fd number

To fix this edit the ./configure file and change the first line from "#!/bin/sh" to "#!/bin/bash".


Now i was able to install windows 2003 64

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 256 -boot d -cdrom win2003.iso -hda win2003.img -localtime


Installing KQEMU Acceleration Layer

I tried but was not able to get it work

I tried both apt-get kqemu and compiled qemu 0.9.0 and kqemu-1.3 from source,

1st i tried to install with kqemu it got stuck while "starting windows"

Next i tried with -no-kqemu option now 2003 64 installed successfully
After installation i tried with acceleration, initial loading screen came after it screen gone blank.

I installed using

wget http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/kqemu-1.3.0pre11.tar.gz

tar xzf kqemu-1.3.0pre11.tar.gz
cd kqemu-1.3

./configure
make
make install

modprobe kqemu




Installation Experience



Windows 2003 32 bit got stuck while "installing devices" , after restarting it worked fine.

Windows 2003 64 bit installed with not problem

It took 4-5 hours to complete the installation !!!!

Really need great patient to do.. Some steps will take long time with not progress moving.. But may not be stuck.. need waiting...


Windows Experience



Its usable but really slow.. I ran some asp.net sites on that including my home page, its a little bit slow.. but not so bad.
To install .net framework 3.5 it took 1hr!!