Make Win2003 R2 POSIX-compatible without Cygwin

Maybe this is never going to be useful to anyone, but it may be an interesting read if you want to know that it can be done :)

This guide should work with both 32 and 64 bit installations of Windows Server 2003 R2, you simply have to download different versions of the files I link you (by default 32 bits). Interested? Let’s go on…

• First of all, if you haven’t already do it, you have to download and install the .Net 2.0 framework. This is necessary to follow with PowerShell 1.0 installation
• Now it’s PowerShell 1.0 turn, let’s install it in the usual next next finish way. This will give us a more decent command line shell than the primitive (and ugly) cmd.exe
• Now let’s go to the Control Panel, Add/Remove Program, click on Add/Remove Windows Compontents and look for Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (also known as SUA). SUA is the updated version of the old Windows Services for UNIX (WSFU), that’s no more supported on Windows Server 2003 R2.
• Download and install Utilities and SDK for UNIX-based Application. While installing this, pay attention to the case sensitive file system. If you are really migrating an old UNIX service to Windows (shame on you!), you should really enable this option, but remember that generally Windows programs are not coded with case sensitiviness in mind, and you may break them.
• Last step: let’s go again to the Control Panel, System, Advanced , click on the Environment button and add to the PATH environment variable C:\WINDOWS\SUA\bin (or whatever is your Windows base directory…ops, folder)

We are done! You can launch Windows PowerShell and start editing your configuration files with vim ! :)

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