if the spice tools are installed, copy & pasting text and even images (!) should work 😀

what does not work virtualbox like (yet) is host-to-guest-and-vice-versa-file-transfer (which can be annoying to hack around the problem with iso images :D)

hostnamectl; # tested with
  Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
            Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-22-amd64
      Architecture: x86-64

two possibilities:

  • first:
    • generate a iso image (but this is a bit cumbersome)
    • su - root
apt update && apt install genisoimage
genisoimage -o name-of-iso-file.iso ./add-this-file-to-the-iso.tar.gz
    • then mount iso image via virt-manager
  •  second:
    • shutdown the kvm guest
    • mount the qcow2 into the host filesystem like this:
# to mount a kvm.qcow2 harddisk image
su - root
modprobe nbd max_part=63
qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 /home/user/vms/kvm/harddisk.image.qcow2

# non-gui way
# find mountable partitions

# with these two very helpful overview-harddisk alias no problem
# run this
alias harddisks='lsblk -o '\''NAME,MAJ:MIN,RM,SIZE,RO,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID'\'''
# run that
alias loop_df='while true; do (clear; echo '\''===== hostname:'\''; hostnamectl; echo '\''===== looped harddisk info '\''; datum; dmesg|tail -n20; echo '\''===== where is what'\''; harddisks; echo '\''===== harddisk usage'\''; df -Th;) ; sleep 1 ; done'
# then run
loop_df

# mount the root-partition of the guest
mount /dev/nbd0p1 /media/user/kvm_guest_mount/

# transfer files, then umount when done
umount /dev/nbd0p1

# gui-way: open up a filemanager (caja etc.)
# and click on the newly available virtual harddisk
# it will ask for password to mount it 

# to umount a kvm.qcow2 harddisk image
qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0

manpages:

qemu-nbd.man.txt

virt-manager.man.txt

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