6mo ago

Moving files from Windows VM to my Host

Hi everyone,

I am very new to Linux/GNU amd I have moved from windows to Fedora workstation 40 with GNOME a few moths ago.

I have been blown away how easy everything have been to migrate but there is one thing I can't migrate which is proton drive as they don't support Linux 😡.

I decided to follow some advice online and set up a windows VM in GNOME boxes and install proton Drive then I can copy/mount my files leaving the VM to sync my proton drive.

I have insralles spice on both the Host and the Guest OS and can copy filed to the VM but I can't for the life of me work out how to get from the VM.

I am probably being stupif but please be gentle I have only been using Linux for 2 months.

Thanks in advance.

17 comments

rclone supports Proton Drive, no need to run a Windows VM for that.
- This, or you could just symlink a folder in your home to wherever a wine prefix would be to run it.
- I have tried r clone and I keep getting the error about the account being locked out and never connects and I get a similar issue with Celeste.

iirc, virtiofs and spice https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/
- virtiofs is amazing, got my entire Steam library on it. It's like it's not there, NVMe speeds no problem.
  
  Virtiofs is very good

sftp or rsync

I only use a Windows VM For our ancient (in computer terms) Canon LIDE 60 scanner which seems to work best there (linux produces highly grey contrasted scans).
For all of our scanned documents from the scanner, I have it mapped to a network drive via Samba Shares. Since you are using Fedora, I think you may already have Cockpit installed. This makes it a lot easier and is a web gui to manage servers. You can usually access it on your Desktop via https://localhost.9090 Then you would need to install 45 Drives File Sharing plugin and setup a SAMBA share.
From the Windows VM, just map to the same workgroup you set in the SAMBA Share you created and give it a drive ID such as F:
- This seems like it might work but I can't seem work out do you have a guide i can look up ?
  
  First, confirm if you can access Cockpit by going to the https://localhost:9090, If not, follow the Fedora instructions here: Having some familiarity with Command Line is essential. Your graphical package manager may or may not include Cockpit.
  https://cockpit-project.org/running#fedora
  Cockpit does sometimes allow you to install "plugins" from the web GUI, but in my experience (both on Debian and Arch), it doesn't do it to well. If you can't install plugins for 45 Drives file sharing plugin, you will need to do it manually:
  For the 45 Drives plugin to enable sharing: https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing (I believe it's the "Direct from .rpm" section if you scroll down in the Readme)
  From there, once you are logged into Cockpit on the left you will see a link for "File Sharing"
  
  This isn't as complex as it may seem as long as you follow their steps you should be golden.

Just turn off the vm (shutdown the windows install running in the vm, not pause), mount the vm block device, navigate to the file and get it that way.
Are you using qemu?
- Alternately, since the vm has network access, just use ssh from your windows vm to scp your files from the windows vm to the Linux host.
- No I am using gnome boxes
  
  alright, good news, you probably are using qemu. the disk images (that’s the hard drives for the vm) are usually in the .local/share/gnome-boxes/images/ in your home directory. if the images are .qcow2 files then you’re running qemu.

Honestly I just use OnionShare or syncthing. Its excessive but it just works

The best way is to use a program called filezilla with sftp

17 comments