How to install virtio-fs drivers on Windows

This document describes how to manually install the virtio-fs drivers on Windows.

This document assumes you have a guest with a virtio-fs device. Documentation for configuring virtio-fs devices in libvirt is here.

Prerequisites

A guest running Microsoft Windows
WinFsp - Windows File System Proxy
virtio-fs PCI device driver
virtio-fs service

Installing WinFsp

Download and run the latest stable version of the WinFsp installer:

In the installer the default selected options are sufficient unless you plan to develop your own user-mode file system (or contibute to virtio-fs for Windows).

You should not need to reboot unless WinFsp was already running on your system.

Installing the virtio-fs PCI device driver

Start Computer Managenment and locate the virtio-fs PCI device in the "Device Manager" tool. It should appear as a "Mass Storage Controller" under "Other devices".

Right-click on the device and select "Update driver" from the pop-up menu. From the "Update Drivers" dialog choose "Browse my computer for drivers" and fill in the appropriate directory where the drivers files are located. If your operating system does not include a virtio-win driver ISO you can download it here.

Installing the virtio-fs service

Run as administrator the Command Prompt and execute the following command in order to register virtio-fs as a service which starts automatically when Windows loads.

C:\> sc create VirtioFsSvc binpath="(your binary location)\virtiofs.exe" start=auto depend="WinFsp.Launcher/VirtioFsDrv" DisplayName="Virtio FS Service"

A manual service start is done with the following command:

C:\> sc start VirtioFsSvc

virtio-fs will use the first available drive letter starting with Z: and downward. Use the "-m" command line parameter to explicitly select a drive letter.