Spice client folder never becomes available

[brannerchinese]

I am having trouble accessing the shared folder from Ubuntu Desktop. When I open the File application and choose "Other locations", under "Networks" I see an item "Spice client folder". However, no matter how long I wait, any efforts to open it bring "Unable to access location" and "HTTP error: Could not connect: Connection refused".

Is there a URL or path of some sort for the shared folder, once it has become available?

Is there something further I need to do? Is there some sort of manual device-mounting process that also needs to take place?

Configuration:

• Host: MacOS Monterey 12.3.1
• Guest: Ubuntu 20.04 Focal (desktop)
• spice-vdagent spice-webdavd are installed and running
• Under UTM's settings for this Guest, under "Sharing", both "Enable Clipboard Sharing" and "Shared Directory" are checked.

[lonewolf2222]

I have the same problem but with Kali Linux as guest OS. Clicking on "Spice client folder" does not open anything.

Host: MacOS 12.3.1
Host: Kali Linux 2022.1
Networking: Bridged

Networking is working. In the guest OS, I can also access AFP shares from my NAS located on my local network.

[pawelsulik]

I fixed by

apt-get install spice-*

[varunpan]

How can i access the shared directory from CLI?

[s3784244]

I'm having the same issue, I'm not able to access http://127.0.0.1:9843/. Any other solutions?

[MarcoBonino]

Same problem.
I tried apt-get install spice-* and to uncheck/check Enable Clipboard Sharing and Shared Directory.

• Host: MacOS Monterey 12.4 (M1 chip)
• Guest: Ubuntu Server 22.04 AArch64

[rcrx]

Is there a resolution to this issue?

[simonhuwiler]

Same problem here. At first, it worked. After a reboot: "Connection refused". I can see the folder via browser: http://127.0.0.1:9843/

Host: MacOS BigSur
VM: Ubuntu 20.04

[thisisrandy]

All of the proposed fixes floated here have "worked" for me. However, none of them are reliable. Ultimately, the root cause seems to be time. If I wait an unspecified amount of time before accessing the Spice client folder, it works. Otherwise, it issues the error OP specifies. There is clearly a bug here that needs to be addressed, but for anyone coming here for an immediate fix, wait a while, and the Spice client folder will resolve. Unfortunately, I cannot offer anything more specific at this time.

EDIT: While this works, @onedrawingperday's solution is much more direct. Newcomers to this issue, please see that reply.

I'll also note that @onedrawingperday's solution is bufferless, which is a huge deal when transferring large files on a low memory host machine. The Spice folder, by contrast, fills a several GB buffer which can easily exhaust memory.

[oliviajohansen]

All the above didn't really work for me but this did: follow the below step from https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/ubuntu-20-04

then run
sudo netplan generate
sudo netplan apply

and test that the networking works using
ping -c3 www.ubuntu.com

[onedrawingperday]

For the past year and a half, I've been using UTM on a Mac host with a Ubuntu LTS guest and never encountered this issue with the Spice client folder, until today, right after I upgraded to Mac OS Ventura.

After trying out various workarounds, I stumbled upon this comment over at the Gnome forums and managed to solve the issue by typing dav://localhost:9843 in Nautilus Other Locations > Connect to Server. Also I bookmarked the mounted directory in the Nautilus sidebar, so that I don't have to enter the above again.

This looks like an odd Ubuntu/Gnome bug.

[stuaxo]

I had to do the same with a debian 32 bit guest in an ubuntu 64 bit host.

The dav://localhost:9843 goes in nautilus in the guest machine.

[fiore42]

None of these suggestions worked for me.

I finally found joy following these steps.

Host: MacOS Ventura 13.0 on MacBook Air M2
Guest: Ubuntu 22.04 for ARM
UTM 4.0.9

hope it helps!

[martin-braun]

curl http://127.0.0.1:9843 returns my files, so far so good, but how do I mount properly with davfs2? It asks for credentials which I don't have, I tried my credentials and the credentials of the host machine.

EDIT: Ok it works, but it took very long to authenticate.

[pakyrs]

works fine, use these steps:

# install the spice-webdav tools
apt install spice-webdavd

# check if the folder share works
curl http://127.0.0.1:9843

# install davfs2
apt install davfs2

# create a folder to mount to
mkdir -p /mnt/webdav

# mount the webdav share, use your client username / password to login
mount.davfs http://127.0.0.1:9843 /mnt/webdav

For better performance and easy management use VirtFS on linux hosts.