[Virtio-fs] Mount several mount tags in Windows using VirtioFS

[Gal Hammer]

Hi Jonas,

On Tue, 3 Nov 2020 at 18:51, Jonas Andradas <j.andradas at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Gal,
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2020 at 5:32 PM Gal Hammer <ghammer at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jonas,
>>
>> On Tue, 3 Nov 2020 at 18:15, Jonas Andradas <j.andradas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> TL;DR - Is there a way to mount more than one filesystem from a Linux
>>> host inside a Windows guest using VirtioFS?
>>>
>>
>> TL;DR No.
>>
>>
> Thanks for the information/confirmation!
>

You're welcome. ;-)


>
>
>> I didn't implement (yet?) the code to track all the instances of PCI
>> devices and mount a folder or a drive for each one.
>>
>>
> For the moment, I will mount a temporary folder from the host and copy
> to/from it the files as needed.  My first approach to work around this was
> to create symbolic links within this shared folder, to the directories I
> wanted to share, but Windows sees the symbolic links (1 KB files) rather
> than following the link and thus being able to access the 2 or 3 different
> host directories by mounting just one.
>

Yeah, I'm aware of that as well. The symbolic link support is not
implemented.


>
> I have a Windows guest running on a Linux host, and I wanted to share
>>> several directories from the host inside the guest using VirtioFS.
>>>
>>> I followed the instructions I found in several places [1][2][3], and
>>> have installed the VirtioFS drivers and WinFPS. I first tried with one
>>> filesystem, and I can mount it and browse it fine.
>>>
>>> I then configured my Windows guest XML definition so it has 2
>>> 'filesystems' to, each with its own mount_tag (e.g. 'software' for
>>> '/home/user/software' and 'documents' for '/home/user/documents').  Windows
>>> shows 2 "Virtio FS Devices" in the device manager, so this looks promising.
>>>
>>> However, when I run 'virtiofs.exe' within Windows (or the service [1]
>>> suggests starts), I get a "Z:" mount (or whichever letter I specify with
>>> '-m <DRIVE>') with the first filesystem I specified ('software' in the
>>> example above).  If I then run 'virtiofs.exe' for a second time, I get a
>>> new mount (e.g. Y:), but with the same filesystem ('software', and not
>>> 'documents').
>>>
>>> I tried adding the mount_tag to the virtiofs.exe command line, or even
>>> the PCI path Windows sees the devices on, but this fails (understandably
>>> so, since the help does not indicate how to specify which filesystem should
>>> be mounted).
>>>
>>> My question was whether (and if so, how) it is actually possible to
>>> mount more than one directory from the host inside a Windows guest using
>>> VirtioFS (as can be done in Linux guests).
>>>
>>> [1] https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/howto-windows.html
>>> [2]
>>> https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows/issues/126#issuecomment-667432487
>>> [3]
>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/i12uyn/virtiofs_is_amazing_plus_how_i_set_it_up/g12o5qt/
>>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>>
>>     Gal.
>>
>
> Cheers,
> Jonas.
>

    Gal.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/virtio-fs/attachments/20201104/b9109913/attachment.htm>