Hetzner - Dual Booting Windows & Ubuntu Minimal, Ubuntu Minimal fails to install

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I’m very much a novice when it comes to server stuff, so bear with me.

A few months ago I lucked out on a dedicated server, nabbing an i7 3700 with 16GB of RAM & 2x 1TB HDDs, and have added a 500GB SSD to it for a grand total of £29/month. Specs are fine, and it’s pretty snappy.

I use it mainly for hosting game servers when I want to faff about with my mates, and am wanting to see what I can do to the AzerothCore source code. Problem is, some of the game servers only run well on Windows, with WINE being unplayable. Conan Exiles’ dedicated server is one of them. But the reverse is true as well, with AzerothCore and the server software for 7 Days to Die running much faster on Linux.

So I need to dual-boot. I’ve Windows 10 installed on it already, and I’d rather not wipe the drive unless I absolutely have to. It’s a pain in the arse to get W10 all sorted out, optimized, and free of all the telemetry.

The only guide I could find on installing Ubuntu minimal was this oldie: https://nsrc.org/wrc/workshops/2007/PacNOG3/day1/linux/ubuntu-installation.pdf

Followed it well enough, up until the part where it says to delete all pre-existing partitions. I didn’t do that, as that would remove my Windows 10 install. Made two partitions, one for / and another for Swap. That works fine, but when I go to the next stage where Ubuntu is then installed to the partitions, it instantly throws a very unhelpful error stating that it failed to install:

Installation step failed: Installing the system

It’s not giving me much to go off of there.

If it’s of any use, here’s a screenshot of the existing partitions prior to trying to install Ubuntu: https://i.imgur.com/oAxlFb6.png

Any idea how to go about this?

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Why dual-boot and not go for some emulation/virtualization?

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+1 for virtualization mate. If you need help with that we can hook you up @Mason @Neoon etc.

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pretty much this
it’s a dedicated
let’s QEMU

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Virtualization has some hefty performance drains in certain workloads, which are a deal-breaker since I want every last drip of performance. In particular, 4k random reads are about 3x slower in a VM than in an actual OS.

So I’m going for a dual-boot, and I can’t figure out why it’s failing to install to the partitions.

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If you want close to zero loss, you use containers, otherwise go with KVM that has a bit of overhead.
I do recommend put Proxmox on it, its free, put one Windows VM for 7 Days to Die and one Ubuntu VM for the rest.

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I assume the containers are a wee bit different from Docker containers, which are just all-in-one packages for Ubuntu. The reason I am going for a dual boot is that the server programs for these games are not optimized at all.

Is there any particular difference between a VM, and a container, as far as Proxmox is concerned? You recommended using VMs, but since containers offer a lesser performance impact, I’d be going with those.

Still would like to dual-boot since, y’know, 0% performance impact. But I’m intrigued with this container lark.

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Technically speaking, Docker containers are still virtualized environments. Proxmox uses LXC virtualization for containers with a next-to-zero performance hit from running processes on the host node.

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Well, yet a linux host won’t run a Windows in LXC
or am I missing something

If you measured a performance hit of this relevance, I’d say that something is odd either on the host or in your qemu configuration
Running a VM in proxmox is probably the fastest route
Not to mention that your box shouldn’t have a lantronix constantly attached to perform tests

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This sounds like a bad configuration, default settings for almost all virtualization environments are not sufficient.

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It doesn’t virtualize the kernel, but it still virtualizes the overall system environment.

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That’s QEMU/KVM, not LXC. LXC does a great job at making a different non-OpenVZ enviornment, but it doesn’t emulate the entire box in a method of abstracting to any 8x086 system.

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I thought KVM virtualized the kernel as well? Either way, the underlying argument that LXC is a form of virtualization still holds true :sweat_smile:

LXC ( Linux Containers ) is an operating-system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a control host using a single Linux kernel.

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It virtualizes the entire system, not just a kernel abstraction with a sandboxed userland.

To boil it down to not-quite-real-but-illustrative-still references: LXC is basically a stronger OpenVZ, whereas KVM is a complete emulator - in so many shortcoming statements.

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Right…that’s what I meant/said? I understand that KVM virtualizes everything including the kernel, whereas LXC does not.

LXC runs off of the host kernel, and therefore just virtualizes the processes on top of an isolated instance. Perhaps I could’ve used better phrasing, as opposed to overall system environment haha.

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You’re splitting hairs based upon your own misstatements, which, being a canine, doesn’t benefit you much. I was only wishing to illustrate further possible misconceptions.

I just don’t want people to end up with the wrong “Cliffs Notes” ideologies on a top-down reference.

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Gah. You know what I mean, thanks for clearing it up.

To summarise, you really shouldn’t ever need to dual boot a server. Virtualization (in one form or another) should more than suffice.

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If you fold, I get to rub your belly. Quid Pro Canid.

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Virtualization has a non-zero performance hit. Zero performance hit is what I want, so dual-boot is still preferred.

To clarify this back and forth about KVM and LXC, with Proxmon using LXC, will Windows run in it with a unnoticeable performance loss as well? LXC being a Linux thing, after all.

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If your biggest concern is about a 10% (at most) performance hit, hire someone to set this up for you up front, and avoid any further issue.

You’re acting like $2 is a hell of a lot of money to lose, but don’t seem willing to put in the footwork to actually figure it out yourself.

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