Sharing a folder a windows guest under virt-manager

Sharing data between guest and host system is necessary in many scenarios. If the guest is a Linux system, you can simply add a shared folder that will be automatically mounted. However, this does not work if the guest is Windows. Sometimes, you can simply workaround it by using Samba shares, but in some scenarios network configuration makes it difficult. For example, when using usermode networking, the host machine can’t communicate easily via the network with the guest.

However, there is another way to share folders in virt-manager that actually works for Windows guest – SPICE . The first step is to configure the sharing in virt-manager . In the VM details view, click on “Add Hardware” and select a “Channel” device. Set the new device name to org.spice-space.webdav.0 and leave the other fields as-is.

Now start the guest machine and install spice-webdav on the guest machine. After installing spice-webdav make sure the “Spice webdav proxy” service is actually running (via services.msc ).

Now running C:\Program File\SPICE webdavd\map-drive.bat will map the shared folder, which is by default

/Public . If you encounter the following error

It means that the Spice webdav proxy service is not running.

If you want to change the shared folder, you will have to use virt-viewer instead of virt-manager , and configure it under File->Preferences.

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14 thoughts on “Sharing a folder a windows guest under virt-manager”

I got this running with a linux virt-manager and windows guest.
Seemed to be working, though extremely laggy while browsing directories.
However, when I try to copy or access large files, say only 400-500 MB and larger, the windows guest errors out with a message to indicate the file size limit is exceeded.
Really? Have you ran into this before?
Thank you.

I didn’t stress test it, so I didn’t run into large files problems. When I need to copy very large files back and forth, I usually just mount the disk image and work directly on it.

I really like this concept, but it’s not ready for prime time….at least from my experience. It was far too laggy to be useful. For some of my windows-based applications, in order to access files over the share, I had to keep a windows explorer window open and continually refresh the shared folders. This would allow the application to access the files from a hang state. It would work for a few seconds, then I’d need to refresh again. Apparently, whatever file library the application used was not compatible with this share.

I’ve abandoned this concept and run a local samba share. Orders of magnitude better performance (once I got the samba tricks figured out).

Didn’t work for me, seemed like the server process was crashing.

A bit more googling got me to https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2019/02/15/whats-new-for-wsl-in-windows-10-version-1903/ , which talks about sharing files between WSL linux and windows. Not terribly interesting for us… except that it says the sharing is done over 9p and mentions a 9p client.

Once this update is out, I’m wondering if that 9p client (or server) would work for filesharing between linux hosts and windows guests.

In the meantime, though, WSL got me thinking – how would I transfer files from one linux host to another? scp, of course! So I generated a key, added the pub component to my host’s authorized_keys, and now I can scp files around. The lack of gui could be an issue for some, but I’m quite happy with the command line myself.

What should I set the target in the target path, and the driver type and mode type in virt-manager to? (see here: https://i.imgur.com/cksNRqv.png)

I am trying to find a way to share files between a linux host and a window7 VM that does require exposing the VM to my network. We are trying to keep it isolated from the greater network on purpose. This eliminates the samba method of sharing as far as I can tell. Any suggestions?

This method would work without network, but it’s buggy/laggy. I switched to samba instead. But if you must remain off the network, then give this method a try.

Cant get it to working, “Spice webdav proxy service” wont start, with error: 1067
Windows could not start the Spice webdav proxy service on local computer

Unfortunately, when installing ‘Spice webdav’ an error occurs.
As an alternative, I found a way to share a ‘host’ machine folder by logging in as a user with a password from the XP guest (guest ok = no). The registry must be modified as follows:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Lsa] “LmCompatibilityLevel” = dword: 00000001
Also. deselect ‘USE SIMPLE SHARED USE OF FILES’ in ‘folder options’ tab ‘see’
and put the machine in ‘WORKGROUP’
Sorry, English is not my native language!
Source:
‘https://bgstack15.wordpress.com/2017/10/01/samba-and-ntlm-for-windows-clients/’

This post was promising but I too got the 1067 errors and could not get the service to start. The missing part of the puzzle for me was that the latest guest tools have to be installed on the windows guest also (https://www.spice-space.org/download/windows/spice-guest-tools/spice-guest-tools-latest.exe). The guest tools installed a lot of what I believe are the virtio drivers, so I think I got much more than necessary. But once installed the proxy service started. Then I was able to configure virt-viewer for share, and the map-drive.bat script mapped the shared folder to z:

No such menu item as “Menu -> Preferences” under either the manager window or the VM config window. And under Edit -> Preferences, there’s nothing for editing the path to the shared directory. (and the version that comes with Linux Mint 19.x doesn’t have an XML edit window).

First I got error 1067 too – turns out that I installed x86 spice-webdav instead x64. After changing it to valid version service starts properly.

Then when I tried to run .bat, i encountered error 67 (with webdav proxy running!). Found out on github.com/lofyer/spice-webdav that firewall should be disabled. Can confirm, it fully works now.

jrv Said the missing part of the puzzle for him was figuring out that the guest tools had to be installed on the client. It’s the opposite problem for me. Apparently there are tools that need to be installed on the host. Could someone tell me what those tools are (for Ubuntu 20.04 x64) ? BTW, the map-drive.bat file worked perfectly for me in my Win7 guest and the Spice webdav proxy service is running in services.msc.

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WebDAV: Подключаем сетевой диск облачного хранилища в Windows 10 и Linux

Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) – это расширение HTTP, которое обеспечивает совместный способ редактирования и управления вашими файлами на удаленном веб-сервере. В этой статье вы узнаете, как подключить диск WebDAV в Windows 10 и Linux, для того чтобы получить доступ файлам облачного хранилища непосредственно в файловом менеджере.

Содержание

Подключение сетевого диска по протоколу WebDAV в Windows 10

Чтобы подключиться к каталогу WebDAV в Windows 10, вам понадобится URL-адрес облачного хранилища по протоколу WebDAV, данные для авторизации в вашу учетную запись.

• Откройте Проводник на своем компьютере и нажмите правой кнопкой мыши по значку «Этот компьютер».

• В открывшемся контекстном меню нажмите на «Подключить сетевой диск. »
• В новом диалоговом окне введите букву диска, которую вы хотите сопоставить и в опции «Папка» укажите URL-ссылку сетевого хранилища, которая работает по протоколу WebDav. Поставьте галочку на опции «Использовать другие учетные данные».

Например, для облачного хранилища NextCloud ваша персональная ссылка доступна в левом нижнем углу веб-интерфейса облака, в окне Настройки.

Для облачного хранилища OneDrive ссылка на подключение должна содержать идентификатор.

Ссылка выглядит следующим образом:

Где xxxxxxxx – это идентификатор. Скопировать свой идентификатор можно в URL-адресе OneDrive. Авторизуйте в OneDrive , затем в адресной строке браузера скопируйте данные после знака равно.

• В следующем окне ведите учетные данные авторизации облачного хранилища.

Будет произведена авторизация и затем подключение к облачному хранилищу.

• Нажмите правой кнопкой мыши по значку «Быстрый доступ» , в появившемся меню выберите «Закрепить текущую папку на панели быстрого доступа».

Как повысить максимальный размер загружаемых файлов до 4 ГБ

По умолчанию в Windows максимальный размер файлов, которые можно пересылать по WebDAV, около 50 МБ. Чтобы повысить до 4 ГБ, выполните следующие действия:

• Редактор реестра. Откройте меню Пуск и с помощью поиска в нем откройте приложение regedit от имени Администратора.

• В редакторе реестра Regedit перейдите в каталог

• Найдите значение FileSizeLimitInBytes. Нажмите правой кнопкой мыши и выберите «Изменить», а затем измените значение на ffffffff.

Что делать, если не удается подключиться к каталогу WebDAV

Если вы не можете подключиться к каталогу WebDAV, обновите базовый уровень проверки подлинности в реестре Windows.

• Редактор реестра. Откройте меню Пуск и с помощью поиска в нем откройте приложение regedit от имени Администратора.
• В редакторе реестра Regedit перейдите в каталог

• Найдите значение BasicAuthLevel. Нажмите правой кнопкой мыши и выберите «Изменить», а затем измените значение на 2.

Подключение сетевого диска по протоколу WebDAV в Linux

Рассмотрим два способа подключения WebDav в Linux.

Первый способ. Подключение из файлового менеджера

• Откройте файловый менеджер. В зависимости от файлового менеджера расположение опции для подключения может отличаться. Затем, например в файловом менеджере Nemo нажмите на Файл > Подключение к серверу.

• В следующем окне выберите протокол WebDav (если поддерживает облако, то WebDav c шифрованием https).
• Введите данные для авторизации на облачном хранилище. Ссылка на подключение должна быть по типу:

В зависимости от облачного хранилища ссылка может отличаться, но в любом случае в ссылке ввместо http (https) должен быть указан протокол davs.

Второй способ. Монтирование сетевого диска по протоколу WebDav

Во время установки вас спросят, хотите ли вы, чтобы непривилегированным пользователям было разрешено монтировать ресурсы WebDAV. Выберите Да.

• Создаем папку в которую будем монтировать сетевой диск и папку для хранения конфигурации:

Вместо папки nextcloud можно указать свое название.

• Продолжаем:

• Ограничиваем права доступа к папке для только владельца:

• Редактируем файл secrets:

В конце файла нужно вставить ссылку на подключение и данные для авторизации. Пример для подключения облака NextCloud:

• Редактируем таблицу файловой системы:

В конце файла добавляем ссылку на подключения с именем и паролем и конфигурацией монтирования. Пример для подключения к NextCloud:

• Добавляем себя в группу davs2:

• Команда монтирования диска:

• Команда для размонтирования:

Где nextcloud – это ваша папка названия сетевого диска (этап 2 в данной инструкции).

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Client

To connect to a virtual machine using SPICE, you need a client application.

GTK+ widget

spice-gtk is a GTK+3 SPICE widget. It features glib-based objects for SPICE protocol parsing and a gtk widget for embedding the SPICE display into other applications such as virt-manager or Boxes. Python and Vala bindings are available too.

The recommended client application is virt-viewer.

Windows installers

• virt-viewer Windows installer — can be downloaded from virt-manager download page
• UsbDk — A Windows filter driver developed for Spice USB redirection (windows client side) — UsbDk_1.0.22_x64.msi, UsbDk_1.0.22_x86.msi, (source code)
  • https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/spice/win32/usbdk

Other clients

• Android client — aSPICE is a secure, SSH capable, open source SPICE protocol client that makes use of the LGPL licensed native libspice library. You can find and install aSPICE from play.google.com.
• Web client — a simple javascript client
  • https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/spice/spice-html5
• Experimental OS X client
• launcher-mobile — A GPLv2 licensed cross-platform mobile client for both iOS and Android. Though mainly intended to be used as a client for flexVDI, it can also connect to conventional SPICE sessions.
  • It is also avaiable in binary form: flexVDI Client at App Store, flexVDI Client at Play Store

Guest

This section contains various optional drivers and daemons that can be installed on the guest to provide enhanced SPICE integration and performance.

Linux sources

• SPICE vdagent — spice-vdagent-0.21.0.tar.bz2
  • https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/spice/linux/vd_agent
• x.org QXL video driver — xf86-video-qxl-0.1.5.tar.bz2; Also contains Xspice
  • http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-qxl

Windows binaries

This installer contains some optional drivers and services that can be installed in Windows guest to improve SPICE performance and integration. This includes the qxl video driver and the SPICE guest agent (for copy and paste, automatic resolution switching, . )

Windows QXL driver is not needed if you are using the Windows guest tools installer above.

This is not needed if you are using the Windows guest tools installer above.

To enable the folder sharing in the Windows guest you need:

Server

The SPICE server code is needed when building SPICE support into QEMU. It should be available as a package in your favourite Linux distribution, which is the preferred way of getting it.

0.14.91 — release candidate

0.14.3 — stable release

0.12.8 — previous stable series

Xspice server

Xspice — an X and Spice server. Requires Xorg. See README.xspice.

• The latest sources are xf86-video-qxl. Xspice is mostly reusing that driver and linking directly with spice-server.

x11spice

• x11spice — A utility to allow a user to share a current running X session via a Spice server.
  • https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/spice/x11spice

Streaming agent (experimental)

Guest-side daemon which captures the guest video output, encodes it to a video stream and forwards the resulting stream to the host to be sent through SPICE.

Older releases

Older source releases can be found here. Old versions of spice-gtk can be found here.

Nightly Builds

Nightly builds are generated from upstream git master.