Hi everyone! I want to be able to access a folder inside the guest that corresponds to a cloud drive that is mounted inside the guest for security purposes. I have tried setting up a shared filesystem inside Virt-Manager (KVM) with virtiofs (following this tutorial: https://absprog.com/post/qemu-kvm-shared-folder) but as soon as I mount the folder in order for it to be accessible on the guest host the cloud drive gets unmounted. I guess a folder cannot have two mounts at the same time. Aliasing the folder using bind and then sharing the aliased folder with the host doesn’t work either. The aliased folder is simply empty on the host.
Does anyone have an idea regarding how I might accomplish this? Is KVM the right choice or would something like docker or podman better suited for this job? Thank you.
Edit: To clarify:
The cloud drive is mounted inside a virtual machine for security purposes as the binary is proprietary and I do not want to mount it on the host (bwrap and the like introduce a whole lot of problems, the drive doesn’t sync anymore and I have to relogin each time). I do not use the virtual machine per se, I just start it and leave it be.
Wouldn’t you just be able to create a folder for Xdrive (imaginary alternative to Google drive) in the Virtual Machine and another one in the host.
Since they are both synchronized with Xdrive they would have the same content.
The cloud drive is mounted inside a virtual machine for security purposes as the binary is proprietary and I do not want to mount it on the host (bwrap and the like introduce a whole lot of problems, the drive doesn’t sync anymore and I have to relogin each time). I do not use the virtual machine per se, I just start it and leave it be.
The best option would be to have a “regular” client that keeps a local copy in sync with the cloud instead of a mount.
BTW: IDK what cloud storage you are using, but IIRC some show files that are not available locally (ie. only the most recent files are downloaded locally - the older stuff is downloaded on request).
Alternatively, you could hack something together running unison locally in the guest to sync the cloud folder to a shared one… you’ll have two copies of the data though.
fwiw: if you go w the container strategy with docker or podman, you should be able to use the storage overlay based on how i’m reading your question.
it’s hard to ascertain any path forward w/o knowing more details on the cloud drive and how’s it’s currently mounted on the guest instance.
I have no idea how it is mounted (how can I find out?) because the binary is proprietary. This is why it is contained inside a virtual machine.
run the command mount with sudo access and if you can see it enumerated in the printout then you should be able to proceed with either a container overlay or separate mount point.
if not, then it’ll get very advanced very quickly; do you know how to use strace?
I just checked and it is mounted as a fuse drive.
do you know how to use strace?
A very confident NO :)
Does rclone support the cloud service?
Gotcha, in that case maybe a container? You can use a bind mount to link a folder on the host to inside the container. You could use docker/podman or LXC.
This is what I have been trying for the past two days actually: https://lemmy.ml/post/22215540 Could you please assist me there if you have an idea? Thanks :)
Maybe reshare the directory locally through Samba on your VM?
Why not NFS? Regardless, wouldn’t it be slower anyway compared to virtiofs?
