mount / include another folder apart from my linux home folder in winboat

[Florian-Munich]

I am sorry, if this is a very basic question: Currently winboat is able to access my Linux home folder as a network device from within windows. I would like to specify an additional folder that I want to access from the virtual windows system. How can I do that?

[DanDaDan]

Same here. My WinBoat VM currently has access to my entire /home/ folder. I don't think this should be enabled by default due to security concerns with Spyware 11. I'd like to just give it access to a specific folder in case I need to move files between my Linux and the Spyware 11.

[sommerper]

Absolutely this should be off by default! I have no interest in Windows scanning my files.

[Nimrodium]

personally i would really like the ability to mount an arbitrary file path from host to an arbitrary path on the guest, ideally so that windows would only need a very minimal disk image and the rest be on the host.

[crumpetts]

I am sorry, if this is a very basic question: Currently winboat is able to access my Linux home folder as a network device from within windows. I would like to specify an additional folder that I want to access from the virtual windows system. How can I do that?

You can do this. You need to edit the docker-compose.yml file found in home/usr/.winboat to contain the pathway(s) you want to share...
looks like this:

volumes:
- "/run/media/user/drive/music:/shared"

You can share any folder without sharing your home folder

I wish i could have the shared folder show up as a drive like D:, but not sure how to

[Florian-Munich]

great, this is what I have been looking for!
I have changed the file docker-compose.yml
I have deleted the line - "${HOME}:/shared"
and have substituted it with three lines that specify the folders I want to have accessed.
This looks like this:

• "/datadisk/work:/shared"

However, winboat still only shows me the home folder and not the specified folder. I also already rebooted the system. Still no change.
Any thoughts as to why that does not work?

[crumpetts]

I had to play around for it to work. I think going to the .winboat folder and running the command docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d from that folder might have been what fixed it. I also tried to change the folder permissions with sudo chmod 777 that might have done something

I'm a noob so excuse my lack of correct lingo!

[nylimited]

You can do this. You need to edit the docker-compose.yml file found in home/usr/.winboat to contain the pathway(s) you want to share... looks like this:
volumes: - "/run/media/user/drive/music:/shared"
You can share any folder without sharing your home folder
I wish i could have the shared folder show up as a drive like D:, but not sure how to

I am new to the discussion so apologies if this has been covered already. Would this or some other way allow me to point to a shared data folder residing on a NAS? This is the one thing I have not been able to figure out thus far. I tried symlinks in the home directory and mounts but the LAN is on a different network and either I cannot see the data or, when I do see it, the data is cached and changes do not reflect via NFS mounts. No, this is not a security concern for me.

[ASRSI]

Another, not quite so practical option would be to export the corresponding directories on the host Linux via Samba and then import them into Windows. This way, they could then also be defined as drives under Windows. Just an idea!

[Reyhn3]

This helped a lot!

Although not perfectly. I had to name the target paths "/shared2", "/shared3" etc. for them to show up as "Data2" and "Data3". I couldn't get anything else to work.

And I also had to do docker compose, down, docker compose up -d and completely stop the boat and start it again for the settings to take effect.

Finally, I used net use X: \\host.lan\Data2 to map the network path as a drive.

Not perfect, but good enough for me!

[scotgopal]

Thanks for sharing, I can confirm that this works! If it is as easy as adding/modifying lines under the volumes section of the compose file, would be nice if a supporting feature could be added into the winboat gui.

[FokiSensei]

Thanks for this. I tried everything but the "shared" folder name worked for me too. It's a bit weird.

[mcouvill]

Having to down docker and restart it is more a docker thing than winboat. It only really reads the docker compose when it starts and not when the yml file changes.

[paulhduval]

Hi. Very interesting. For my part, I'm trying to have access, in WinBoat, to my auto-mounted DATA disk in Mint (/mnt/DATA or /dev/sda2). I've tried creating a link to that drive in my Home folder thinking that it would show up over in WinBoat but it doesn't. I edited the docker-compose.yml file and added /dev/sda2:/shared but no change. Also used /mnt/DATA:/shared with no success. Any ideas? Thanks.

[mcouvill]

What I did was setup my hos tlinux system as an iSCSI host and served that up on the network. Added a bridged network device in the Winboat windows and used that for the network so it saw the LAN and then ran iSCSI Initiator in the Windows instance and mounted the iSCSI drive as my new G: drive. You might also get it to see your local lan by doing a macvpn in docker compose for the network so you don't need the bridge but I haven't tried that. The drive in question was an external 500G that now both my linux and my winboat instance see.

[paulhduval]

Ok... Seems complicated... Are you able to provide step by step procedure? I'm on Mint Cinnamon. Thanks.

[mcouvill]

Not trying to be flippant but that would be one huge post. Honestly, just google "How to setup an iscsi host on my linux mint machine" and then google "how to mount an iscsi drive in Windows". There are entire web pages dedicated to doing those kinds of things. It's not hard, but it is tedious.

[Krelli71]

I solved the problem quite simply:

On the host system, I set up a Samba share that is only accessible locally (via Winboat) and protected with a username and password. This allowed me to share my entire data partition.

Then, I simply created a network drive in Windows. Windows automatically maps this drive at startup as soon as authentication is successful. The drive is therefore always accessible.

Note: The username/password for Samba share has to be the same like Windows user and password.