VM workaround for truenas network access, sound, cut/paste, and Windows based SPICE viewer

TrueNAS General
1

I’ve figured out how VMs work including USB access, directly mounting zvol partitions to truenas, etc.

There are some remaining issues that I think everyone will face, so looking for the current “best answer” to each of the following:

  1. Best way to send sound from inside the VM to my client (since there is no sound card on the the VM). So say I’m using debian or Windows inside the VM.
  2. I’m using virt-viewer as the client since the built-in web based one is horrible. It has two problems: you have to create a separate startup file to remember each port (since they never fixed the bug to remember recent connections), and cut/paste doesn’t work. Is there a better windows SPICE client?
  3. What’s the best current recommended workaround for the VM’s not being able to see the IP of the truenas box? Everyone complains about this one.
  4. Is there a way to get cut/paste to work so I can move clipboard data between client (viewer) and the VM?

For those curious, to get the zvols to directly mount on truenas, you can just do (assuming your zvols are on main/vm):

mount /dev/z80p1 /mnt/myzol

You can see the zvol mappings by doing this (replace with your pool name, mine was main/vm):

# ls -l /dev/zvol/main/vm
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 15 09:01 tmp-zvol_auto_2024-05-15_00-00-clone -> ../../../zd80
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 May 15 09:01 tmp-zvol_auto_2024-05-15_00-00-clone-part1 -> ../../../zd80p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 May 15 09:01 tmp-zvol_auto_2024-05-15_00-00-clone-part2 -> ../../../zd80p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 May 15 09:01 tmp-zvol_auto_2024-05-15_00-00-clone-part3 -> ../../../zd80p3

You can mount ext4 filesystems just fine. I’m sure FAT32 works as well. But NTFS doesn’t work because the required libraries aren’t installed.

2

This is what I’ve always used and it works no problem.

1 Like
3

thanks. that saved me many hours :slight_smile:

4

Order of operations can be tricky.

5

If the guest OS is Windows, then just use RDP to access the VM. Supports copy&paste, sound, mapping of local folders and even printers or USB devices into the VM, etc.

I’m still puzzled people don’t do this - this has been the only native and consequently default remote access protocol for Windows for decades. Official Microsoft RDP clients/viewers come standard with Windows and are available in the app store for free on Mac OS. On the Windows VM just enable and done. It’s installed already.

EDIT: just checked out of curiosity - since Windows XP and Server 2000.

HTH,
Patrick

2 Likes
6

Not to mention the ability to pass through microphones, cameras, security keys, multi-monitor, I could go on. In my mind it is the gold standard for remote access.

I work from RDP every day, then on top of that I’m using VMWare to remote into my companies VDI (also over the RDP protocol, RDP-ception). Absolutely seamless experience.

1 Like
7

My Guests are mostly linux so I’m asking about that.

so something like audio pulse for example or better.

8

Have you tried XRDP?

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9

xrdp presumably would ONLY work once the guest OS is up, right?

The QEMU virtual machine doesn’t support xrdp natively, does it?

so if there are booting issues, this wouldn’t work. You’d have to use both.

And for live linux, or anything booted from and ISO, this wouldn’t work, right?