Windows VM on Fedora

…because Linux isn’t always a supported OS

Last updated on Sep 7, 2020 7 min read tech

I use Linux every day. And I have for quite a while now. But sometimes, large companies do not exactly cater to people in this demographic…so sometimes I need to spin up a Windows VM on my Linux system. Here is what I’ve found to work for me.

If you do not care to read (or about) all the words and explanations, feel free to skip to the SHORT VERSION

BACKGROUND

Microsoft® provides free Windows virtual machines to allow customers to test their web browsers, which include Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer versions 8 to 11. This VM can be used unrestricted for 90 days.

Because I use Linux every day, I already have a built in hypervisor, KVM. Unfortunately, that isn’t one of the platforms for which Microsoft provides a VM…

I have created an Ansible role to accomplish all of this! Please see ansible-role-winVMbuilder

CHALLENGE

I prefer to use the native tool whenever possible and therefore see installing VirtualBox or Vagrant as tedium. That means I have to do some work to make it work…I have a tendency of making things hard on myself, but here are the steps I followed in order to use Microsoft’s free and legal (I think) VM’s on my laptop running Fedora.

01 install required packages

There are some utilities that are required and some that make this a lot easier. In order to install the virtio-win package (for drivers) we need to enable its repository. So we’ll do that and install the necessary packages:

sudo wget https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/virtio-win.repo \
  -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtio-win.repo --no-clobber
sudo dnf install -y unzip virt-manager virt-v2v virtio-win

02 download the VM image

I will be using a few names over and over throughout this exercise so I go ahead and assign them to variables. Be patient as it downloads, it could take a while depending on the image you choose:

URL=https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/VMBuild_20180425/VirtualBox/MSEdge/MSEdge.Win10.VirtualBox.zip
ZIP_FILE=$(basename $URL)
VM_NAME=${ZIP%.VirtualBox.zip}
wget -P /tmp $URL

03 unzip the VM image

The zipped file is not really all that compressed, but it contains an OVA which is really just an archive file. Luckily we have tools to convert this file type but first we must unzip the file we downloaded:

unzip -d /tmp /tmp/$ZIP_FILE
OVA_FILE=$(ls -t /tmp/*.ova | head -n1)

NOTE: this is sort of a cheezy way to get the OVA_FILE because I’m really just getting the last ova file in /tmp but I’m going with it

04 convert to qcow2

I prefer the qcow2 file format for my VM disk images. Luckily, the virt-v2v package we installed previously provides a great tool to convert our OVA file to this format:

virt-v2v -i ova "$OVA" \
         -oc qemu:///system \
         -o libvirt \
         -of qcow2 \
         -os default \
         -n default \
         -on $VM_NAME

You should really review the entire man page for virt-v2v to get a grasp of just how powerful it is. But just to touch on a few items of note in the command above, we have specified the default storage pool and the default network for our new VM. I chose these because they are most likely pretty universal.

NOTE: I experienced some pretty odd behavior with this command. Sometimes it failed and other times it did not. In fact, sometimes it failed, I made NO change, but tried it again and it worked (see below)

05 modify the XML for my network

OK, I just wasn’t able to get the network right when I was doing the conversion. I’m sure it is possible, but I decided to modify the VM via its XML file. All virtual machines, regardless of what hypervisor is used, are defined in some associated file. So we’ll capture the XML of this new one, and then modify it to the specifications we need:

virsh -c qemu:///system dumpxml $VM_NAME > /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new
sed -e 's/bridge/network/g' \
    -e 's/NAT/default/g' \
    -e "s/type='virtio'/type='e1000'/g" \
    --in-place /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new

06 recreate the VM with new settings

In order to use the modifications we made, we will undefine the VM and then create it again:

virsh -c qemu:///system undefine $VM_NAME
virsh -c qemu:///system create /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new

Viola!

NEXT STEPS

The system will boot up and install/update some drivers so give that some time and then the VM will need to be rebooted (you can accomplish this from the command line with virsh -c qemu:///system reboot $VM_NAME)
~~Microsoft suggests creating a snapshot of the VM so you can keep going to a non-expired VM…but I am going to automate this process which will make that step unnecessary~~ I have created an Ansible role to accomplish all of this! Please see ansible-role-winVMbuilder
I need to modify this VM to do what I need and potentially set it up to use a VPN

SIDE NOTES

I have specified the URI to use in each command related to libvirt (-c qemu:///system) because, even if my user is in the libvirt group on a system the default URI for a user is qemu:///session which is different than root’s and I wanted to make sure I was consistent in order to avoid confusion…ok, the truth is that I didn’t avoid that confusion initially…

WHAT I LEARNED

Sometimes Microsoft isn’t all that bad
I’m glad these tools exist

REFERENCE

SHORT VERSION

To avoid tl;dr enjoy this instead:

#### 01 install required packages
sudo wget https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/virtio-win.repo \
  -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtio-win.repo --no-clobber
sudo dnf install -y unzip virt-manager virt-v2v virtio-win
#### 02 download the VM image
URL=https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/VMBuild_20180425/VirtualBox/MSEdge/MSEdge.Win10.VirtualBox.zip
ZIP_FILE=$(basename $URL)
VM_NAME=${ZIP%.VirtualBox.zip}
wget -P /tmp $URL
#### 03 unzip the VM image
unzip -d /tmp /tmp/$ZIP_FILE
OVA_FILE=$(ls -t /tmp/*.ova | head -n1)
#### 04 convert to qcow2
virt-v2v -i ova "$OVA" \
         -oc qemu:///system \
         -o libvirt \
         -of qcow2 \
         -os default \
         -n default \
         -on $VM_NAME
#### 05 modify the XML for my network
virsh -c qemu:///system dumpxml $VM_NAME > /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new
sed -e 's/bridge/network/g' \
    -e 's/NAT/default/g' \
    -e "s/type='virtio'/type='e1000'/g" \
    --in-place /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new
#### 06 recreate the VM with new settings
virsh -c qemu:///system undefine $VM_NAME
virsh -c qemu:///system create /tmp/${VM_NAME}.new

ODD FAILURE

In this output, I made NO change between the invocations…and it worked the second time. This seems like Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity (…or perhaps someone else’s definition):

$ virt-v2v -i ova "$OVA" -oc qemu:///system -o libvirt -of qcow2 -os default -n default -on $VM_NAME
[   0.0] Opening the source -i ova /depot/images/libvirt/IE11 - Win7.ova
virt-v2v: warning: could not parse ovf:Name from OVF document
[   0.0] Creating an overlay to protect the source from being modified
[   0.1] Initializing the target -o libvirt -oc qemu:///system -os default
[   0.1] Opening the overlay
libvirt: XML-RPC error : Failed to connect socket to '/run/user/1000/libvirt/libvirt-sock': No such file or directory
virt-v2v: error: libguestfs error: could not connect to libvirt (URI = 
qemu:///session): Failed to connect socket to 
'/run/user/1000/libvirt/libvirt-sock': No such file or directory [code=38 
int1=2]

If reporting bugs, run virt-v2v with debugging enabled and include the 
complete output:

  virt-v2v -v -x [...]
$ virt-v2v -i ova "$OVA" -oc qemu:///system -o libvirt -of qcow2 -os default -n default -on $VM_NAME
[   0.0] Opening the source -i ova /depot/images/libvirt/IE11 - Win7.ova
virt-v2v: warning: could not parse ovf:Name from OVF document
[   0.0] Creating an overlay to protect the source from being modified
[   0.1] Initializing the target -o libvirt -oc qemu:///system -os default
[   0.2] Opening the overlay
[  11.0] Inspecting the overlay
[  11.9] Checking for sufficient free disk space in the guest
[  11.9] Estimating space required on target for each disk
[  11.9] Converting Windows 7 Enterprise to run on KVM
virt-v2v: warning: /usr/share/virt-tools/pnp_wait.exe is missing.  
Firstboot scripts may conflict with PnP.
virt-v2v: This guest has virtio drivers installed.
[  15.6] Mapping filesystem data to avoid copying unused and blank areas
[  16.2] Closing the overlay
[  16.4] Checking if the guest needs BIOS or UEFI to boot
[  16.4] Assigning disks to buses
[  16.4] Copying disk 1/1 to /depot/images/libvirt/IE11.Win7-sda (qcow2)
    (100.00/100%)
[  83.8] Creating output metadata
Pool default refreshed

Domain IE11.Win7 defined from /tmp/v2vlibvirt4b0915.xml

[  83.9] Finishing off
$ # huh?!

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