SPICE copy/paste and audio not working

[Whattteva]

Hi, for some reason, I can't get SPICE copy/paste and audio working on my system. I have tried a bunch of results on Google, but none of them seem to work.

My setup is as follows:

• Proxmox 7.3-3 host.
• Debian 11 Bullseye 5.10.0-21-amd64 guest VM.
  • qemu-guest-agent installed.
  • spice-vdagent 0.20.0-2 installed.
• Client machine is a Linux Mint 21.1 5.15.0-58-generic.
• Client virt-viewer 7.0-2build2.

Other things I've tried to no avail.

• I noticed that spice-vdagentd.socket isn't triggering spice-vdagentd.service to start, so I started spice-vdagentd manually with systemctl start spice-vdagentd. How do I get this to start automatically?
• pulseaudio -k

I think that should be all that's needed. If I'm missing further information, let me know. Thank you in advance!

 

[Moayad]

Hi,

the spice-vdagentd should start automatic, however, I would do try the following command:

systemctl enable spice-vdagent.service

the above command lets the service start automatically at boot time.

 

[Whattteva]

systemctl enable spice-vdagent.service

the above command lets the service start automatically at boot time.

Yeah, I've tried that before, but this is what I get:

$ doas systemctl enable spice-vdagentd.service
The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, Also=,
Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for template
units). This means they are not meant to be enabled using systemctl.
 
Possible reasons for having this kind of units are:
• A unit may be statically enabled by being symlinked from another unit's
  .wants/ or .requires/ directory.
• A unit's purpose may be to act as a helper for some other unit which has
  a requirement dependency on it.
• A unit may be started when needed via activation (socket, path, timer,
  D-Bus, udev, scripted systemctl call, ...).
• In case of template units, the unit is meant to be enabled with some
  instance name specified.

Basically it's supposed to be triggered by the socket agent.

Regardless, this still doesn't solve my issue.

 

[Whattteva]

Anyone else have any other ideas? I can't be the only one who's had this issue before!

 

[mmenaz]

Anyone else have any other ideas? I can't be the only one who's had this issue before!

I've (almost) the same problem with Kubuntu 23.04.
At boot I have:

root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl status spice-vdagent
* spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: * spice-vdagentd.socket

Then I can start the service

root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl start spice-vdagent
root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl status spice-vdagent
* spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2023-02-20 11:22:57 CET; 1s ago
TriggeredBy: * spice-vdagentd.socket
    Process: 1374 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd $SPICE_VDAGENTD_EXTRA_ARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCES>
   Main PID: 1375 (spice-vdagentd)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 4561)
     Memory: 820.0K
        CPU: 5ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/spice-vdagentd.service
             └─1375 /usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd

feb 20 11:22:57 kub2210 systemd[1]: Starting Agent daemon for Spice guests...
feb 20 11:22:57 kub2210 systemd[1]: Started Agent daemon for Spice guests.
root@kub2210:/home/marco#

but copy/paste still does not work!
spice-vdagent package is 0.22.1-3
That's a big problem

I've tested with Ubuntu (Gnome) 23.04 and that instead works.
I've found this: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1981338
but seems unresolved...

 

[Whattteva]

I've (almost) the same problem with Kubuntu 23.04.
At boot I have:

root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl status spice-vdagent
* spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: * spice-vdagentd.socket

Then I can start the service

root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl start spice-vdagent
root@kub2210:/home/marco# systemctl status spice-vdagent
* spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2023-02-20 11:22:57 CET; 1s ago
TriggeredBy: * spice-vdagentd.socket
    Process: 1374 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd $SPICE_VDAGENTD_EXTRA_ARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCES>
   Main PID: 1375 (spice-vdagentd)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 4561)
     Memory: 820.0K
        CPU: 5ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/spice-vdagentd.service
             └─1375 /usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd

feb 20 11:22:57 kub2210 systemd[1]: Starting Agent daemon for Spice guests...
feb 20 11:22:57 kub2210 systemd[1]: Started Agent daemon for Spice guests.
root@kub2210:/home/marco#

but copy/paste still does not work!
spice-vdagent package is 0.22.1-3
That's a big problem

I've tested with Ubuntu (Gnome) 23.04 and that instead works.
I've found this: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1981338
but seems unresolved...

That's not almost. It's actually the same exact thing I observed. Loaded but inactive at boot. Start manually,l successfully, but copy/paste/audio still doesn't work.

 

[Whattteva]

Bumping, hopefully maybe someone out there has an insight?

 

[ben_burke]

Hello folks..

I'm a little new to proxmox and spice, bit I did manage to get multiple displays working just now and I thought I should write up what happened.
Environment is Proxmox 7.3-6, Mint Vera 2.1.1 (both the VM and the client).

So, my initial issue was... the remote-viewer application would have only the primary monitor available (other's greyed out). I played around with many settings (graphics memory size, all variations of display..> spice to display--> Spice 2 monitors...

Prior to this thread, I hadn't seen the need to install spice-vdagent... I installed it on my vm and (like others in this post), tried to set it up as an automatic linux servers (to no avail, as per earlier posts in this thread).

On a whim, I tried a reboot of my VM based anyway, with the clue coming from the following output of sudo systemctl enable spice-vdagent.service

The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, Also=,
Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for template
units). This means they are not meant to be enabled using systemctl.

,,,which I guessed might mean, this service will be kicked into life by a socket call, rather than running as a service.

And I feel lucky, as I now have multiple monitors working very happy. Spice looks amazing - I'm thinking of re-jigging my home and office 'daily driver machines) to be proxmox served VMs

I feel sorry and sad for people that don't experiment with opensource software - there is so much incredible stuff out there!

 

[entomologyx]

Same issue here with the new Kali and KDE

 

[haolle]

I have the same issue. Anyone found the solution yet? Thanks.