Gnome-boxes no access to shared folders from guest to host system

[Rulinux]

If have installed gnome-boxes from manjaro official repository on my Manjaro KDE Plasma host system. On boxes I have intalled Manjaro XFCE. It works so far. In the settings of the new virtual machine (Manjaro XFCE) I have given access to my host folders (settings → devices & shares → shared folders).

I have also given access to my host folder via samba. But nothing is visible in the guest system.

But after having starting the VM (guest, Manjaro XFCE) and going into thunar nowhere I can find access to my host shared folders. What is wrong there?

Additionally the clipboard function between host and guest is also not working. There are no settings in boxes.

[snydar]

Hello Rulinux, I have never worked with boxes, but to have access to shared folders on VirtualBox you have to:

For Host:
Assign the group “vboxuser” to the user.

For Guest:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf userName

Maybe you have to do something similar for Gnome-Boxes?
I’m sure someone here knows better.

Greetings

[xabbu]

@Rulinux

Additionally the clipboard function between host and guest is also not working.

See
https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-boxes/stable/clipboard.html.en

Also keep in mind that you need to set up the SPICE vdagent in your guest OS. And of course you need to use the Spice protocol to connect to the guest.

Last time I checked Gnome Boxes uses spice-webdav , so you really need the SPICE tools in your guest OS.

[Rulinux]

@xabbu

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-boxes/stable/clipboard.html.en

Thanks. I have found this description already before. But the setting seems not to exist.
I must be already preinstalled and no more settings do exist. I did not understand that the clipboard only works for text and pictures, e.g. screenshots. Not more.

FILES TRANSFER
I have found out that you can even get files from host to guest without extra samba and spice settings on the host. In the guest system select on the top right (3 vertical buttons). The first line it is written send files. (see attachment). But it is actually just an upload from the host to the guest not vice versa. Of course in the guest settings you have to give access first to specific folders on your host system.

CLIPBOARD

@xabbu

you need to set up the SPICE vdagent
…
of course you need to use the Spice protocol to connect to the guest
…
spice-webdav

I found SPICE vdagent is already automatically preinstalled on the guest system. I did not install it on the guest system.

But what settings and how do I need to make in spice vdagent, spice protocol set up and may be spice-webdav?

However. What still does not work is to “send” / transfer files from the guest system to the host system in boxes!!

[howabout]

This topic showed pretty high up in my search results, and I’d figure I’d share my workaround even if the last post is pretty old.

In my case in a similar setup (though on SteamOS/steamdeck) I’m running Gnome Boxes and a Fedora Xfce VM. I’ve seen the same issue, once booted inside the VM I could see the Spice share in the Thunar > Network Browser but it would not do anything.

I manually mounted the share using gio mount dav://localhost:9843. After running that command I was able to access the share in Thunar. I was also able to access the share directly by typing the dav://localhost:9843 location in the file manager address bar.

However, until I ran the aforementioned command double-clicking on the network share did nothing.

---

As a sidenote, its worth checking on the output of systemctl status spice-webdavd.service.

In my case during the original startup of the VM it reported conflicting mdns names.

● spice-webdavd.service - webdav daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/spice-webdavd.service; static)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2026-02-17 08:50:50 EET; 9s ago
 Invocation: 3c771370ae4a4ef9a8bfcf7db4f23adc
   Main PID: 7398 (spice-webdavd)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 6978)
     Memory: 940K (peak: 1.4M)
        CPU: 21ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/spice-webdavd.service
             └─7398 /usr/sbin/spice-webdavd -p 9843

Feb 17 08:50:50 vm systemd[1]: Started spice-webdavd.service - webdav daemon for Spice guests.
Feb 17 08:50:50 vm (-webdavd)[7398]: spice-webdavd.service: Referenced but unset environment variable evaluates to an empty string: SPICE_WEBDAVD>
Feb 17 08:50:50 vm spice-webdavd[7398]: MDNS collision

I don’t know if that had much play in the issue. I have replaced the hostname (hostnamectl set-hostname new-hostname) and restarted the service (systemctl restart spice-webdavd.service), but going back to the old hostname (after the first gio invocation) didn’t seem to affect the mounts. Might be a false lead.