How to set up shared folders in virt-manager

Do you need to set up a shared folder between your host OS and guests running in virt-manager? I will show you how to do it on your Fedora system which involves a SELinux policy change.

First of all, if you don’t have it already, install virt-manager and create a virtualized guest which should be pretty straightforward. Afterwards create a future share folder on your host and set up the permissions (for the purpose of this article I will grand all permissions):

Afterwards shut down the guest if it’s running and attach the new filesystem in virt-manager:

1. Switch the view to detail hardware view: View > Details
2. Go to Attach hardware > Filesystem
3. Fill in the name of the source path (/share in our case) and virtual target path (anything you like, I will go with /sharepoint)
4. Switch mode to Mapped if you need to have write access from the guest
5. Confirm and start the VM again

Now you can mount your shared folder from the VM:

Or permanently add it to /etc/fstab file:

If you don’t have SELinux enabled everything should work now. If you do (which I recommend), you will need to add a policy for files under your /share folder on your host. SELinux won’t allow you to share this folder until it’s labeled svirt_image_t. Here is how to add this policy on your host using semanage:

That should be it. If not, check the logs :).