How to Share a Folder via Spice?

[proxwolfe]

Hi,

I just enabled "folder sharing" in Proxmox and installed the spice webdav demon in my Windows guest VM.

But nothing happened. No new (network?) folder appeard in the VM?

What other steps do I have to take to make the shared folder appear in Windows?

How (where) do I tell Proxmox what folder to share?

Thanks

 

[leesteken]

I tried it for the first time today and noticed that the spice-webdavd or Spice webdav proxy service was not running and needs to be started manually.
It would still not work until I closed the Spice viewer and reopened it, which also requires setting the shared folder in File>Preferences again.
After that http://localhost:9843/ appears to be working and the Windows Explorer shows a DavWWWRoot (\\localhost@9843) (Z:) drive.
PS: I used Windows 10 2004 and virtio-win 0.1.185 and Proxmox 6.3-3.

 

[proxwolfe]

Thanks for your help!

But I am afraid you lost me half way...

So for me the spice webdavd service also does not start despite being set to automatic. And when I start it manually, it shows as "running" but when I refresh the services list, it again shows as (not running).

What is the spice viewer? Is that the spice guest agent? I installed that but it does not do anything. When I run it, nothing happens. It also installed another service "Spice agent". In terms of start up behaviour it is similar to the spice webdavd service.

I have no idea how to proceed from here...

 

[leesteken]

The Spice viewer is actually named virt-viewer on Linux. It is the client software that is stared for example when you press the Console button on a VM (you might need to press the down arrow on the button first). If it has a File menu with a Preferences option (where you select the shared folder), then you are using the Spice viewer.
If your Spice webdavd service stops after starting it manually, something is probably wrong. Can you post you VM configuration? Did you select SPICE for the Display?

 

[proxwolfe]

I see. No, I don't (want to) use Spice for the display. My VM uses GPU passthrough. So the Spice option is greyed out in the console menu.

I only want to use the folder sharing feature of Spice. Is that possible?

 

[aaron]

I only want to use the folder sharing feature of Spice. Is that possible?

I don't think so. If I understand the situation correctly, the guest is a Windows VM? Why not enable the Remote Desktop and use RDP? With that you can pass through almost any kind of device.

 

[proxwolfe]

Okay, so what I want to do is create a hard disk space that is accessible at the same time from two VMs at high speed.

It is my understanding that I can passthrough a physical disk only to one VM at a time (in a safe manner at least).

Transfer speeds to and from my NAS are not satisfactory.

I have set up a third VM running Openmediavault that makes available a shared folder to both VMs. After installing the virtio NIC, the transfer speed between the OMV share and my Windows VM went up considerably. But there is no virtio NIC for the other VM.

That's why my next idea was to use Spice folder sharing between the proxmox host and the two VMs.

I don't think RDP will help me here (but I am happy to be corrected on this!). Note that the second VM does not support RDP anyway.

I am open to other ideas (maybe there is something that proxmox has to offer for this purpose that I am not aware so far?)

Thanks!

 

[aaron]

What OS is running in the other VM without the Virtio NIC?

Using some kind of network share is your safest bet. Spice's folder sharing is flaky (in my experience) and for sure not the fastest, especially if the limiting factor is the non virtio NIC in the other guest.

Plus Spice and RDP need the client running on the machine on which you want to pass through the local folder. So not really something for you usecase.

 

[proxwolfe]

The OS is one that doesn't fall far from the tree...

Actually, it does seem to include a virtio-net driver but it doesn't work for me. While it shows up in the OS, it does not succeed in obtaining an IP address from my DHCP server (the identically configured vmnet3 does at the same time).

I guess I will live with the speed available via vmxnet3.

Thanks!