libvirt users - Oct 2013 - Accessing the host server's file system from a guest OS

Is there no way in which one can access the host's filesystem from within a
guest OS.

Libvirt's virt-manager GUI seems to indicate that there is, by virtue of
the FileSystem Passthrough option as shown below

[image: Inline image 1]

The scenario I typically have is a Linux Server on a ext4 file system, with
a Windows 7 Guest OS running a KVM machine.

No matter what combination of options I choose, I can never "mount"
the
host drive in Windows to be able to transfer files from one to the other.
 Both VMWare Player and Virtualbox have this capability, yet I find this
sorely lacking in libvirt/virt-manager.  What do I need to do to make this
work?

regards

Roland

On Wed, Oct 02, 2013 at 06:07:20PM +0200, Roland Giesler
wrote:
> Is there no way in which one can access the host's filesystem from
within a
> guest OS.
> 
> Libvirt's virt-manager GUI seems to indicate that there is, by virtue
of
> the FileSystem Passthrough option as shown below
> 
> [image: Inline image 1]
> 
> The scenario I typically have is a Linux Server on a ext4 file system, with
> a Windows 7 Guest OS running a KVM machine.
> 
> No matter what combination of options I choose, I can never
"mount" the
> host drive in Windows to be able to transfer files from one to the other.
>  Both VMWare Player and Virtualbox have this capability, yet I find this
> sorely lacking in libvirt/virt-manager.  What do I need to do to make this
> work?
There is something known as "virtio-9p" which is the 9p filesystem
running over virtio betweeen host & guest. The problem is there are
only guest drivers for Linux. Windows/BSD/etc all out of luck.

The only other option is to setup a private, isolated network
between host & guest and then run NFS or Samba or something
similar.

Daniel
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