[virt-tools-list] How to: Unattended Windows installs in virt-install

[Peter Crowther]

Don't do it with multiple CD-ROM drives, use a floppy with the virtio
drivers and the autounattend. I use mtools to build this from a source
floppy image. More when I'm near a real keyboard and a git repo!

Peter

On Wed, 12 Sep 2018, 15:37 Richard W.M. Jones, <rjones at redhat.com> wrote:

> I have worked out how to do (almost) unattended installs of Windows
> guests using virt-install.  This reveals some issues with
> virt-install, although maybe they are not bugs.
>
> The virt-install command and autounattend.xml file are attached.  You
> will need to:
>
> (1) Put build.sh into a directory.
>
> (2) Create config/ subdirectory.
>
> (3) Put autounattend.xml into the config/ subdirectory.  Edit the file
>     to add your product key.
>
> (4) Download Windows ISO somewhere (modify the path in build.sh).
>
> (5) Run ./build.sh
>
> The result is very large.  Windows Server 2012R2 takes 5.3 GB!
>
>         - - -
>
> The first problem with virt-install I had was that when you use
> multiple CD-ROMs virt-install doesn't choose a sensible boot order.
> That's the reason for the ,boot_order=XX attributes.  It seems like
> this used to work in some old version of virt-install, see:
>
>
> https://serverfault.com/questions/644437/unattended-installation-of-windows-server-2012-on-kvm
>
> The second problem is that --transient can't be used.  This is because
> the guest reboots at least once during installation (and after the
> first reboot the guest is in a half-installed state which looks
> sufficiently like the install worked as far as virt-install is
> concerned).
>
>         - - -
>
> There are also several problems with the current autounattend file or
> Windows itself.
>
> I couldn't get Windows to install virtio drivers even though I
> supplied the virtio ISO.  I guess some change is needed to the XML
> (perhaps:
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/add-device-drivers-to-windows-during-windows-setup
> ).
>
> Windows still asks for the installation language.  Apparently using
> language='en-US' is incorrect or insufficient to suppress this.
>
> You must supply a valid ProductKey.  I couldn't work out how to defer
> activation until after installation.
>
> I'm using these as virt-builder templates.  However really they need
> to be sysprepped (using the Windows tool), so they are not really
> templates.  For my purposes where I'm not distributing them this is
> sort of fine.
>
> Windows is extremely unhelpful if there's a problem with the XML.
> However I found you can debug it like so:
>
> (a) On the failure screen, press [Shift] + F10.
>
> (b) cd X:\Windows\Panther\
>
> (c) type setupact.log
>
> (d) Examine the log file to see the real error.
>
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat
> http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
> Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
> Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows programs, test, and
> build Windows installers. Over 100 libraries supported.
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW
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