[Spice-devel] Webdav on Windows XP

[Koopa Koopa]

On 7/30/20, Frediano Ziglio <fziglio at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm trying to setup a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine with SPICE folder
>> sharing. The latest version, v2.4, fails to install, as the
>> spice-webdavd service fails to start. Running spice-webdavd.exe
>> manually yields the error message "The procedure entry point
>> AcquireSRWLockExclusive could not be located in the dynamic link
>> library KERNEL32.dll", which seems to be a deficiency in using XP [1].
>> After some digging, I've determined that the cause of this is that,
>> when starting the service, spice-webdavd calls g_mutex_lock from Glib
>> [2], which had XP support removed a couple of years ago [3].
>>
>> Version v2.2, which comes from before the Glib change was made,
>> successfully installs and runs. I have been able to map and somewhat
>> use a network drive mapped to the share, but it has broken and I can't
>> seem to get it working again; Windows just says that "The network path
>> http://localhost:9843 could not be found." Strangely enough, when
>> going to that address in Mypal, the share directory is displayed
>> without any issues, and I can browse it.
>>
>
> The purpose of spice-webdavd is to provide the port to be able to use
> webdav from the guest. If another program is able to use it I would
> try to understand why Windows cannot.
>
> Just to confirm, using netstat in the guest can you see the port (9843)
> in listening state?

Yep, that port is in the listening state.

> Is the Windows XP service running?

Yes, it is, and I have tried restarting it.

In further testing, the share works perfectly fine with the free
BitKinex client, but I still can't get it to work again as a mapped
drive in Windows at all. Since it continues to work without any issues
in the 3rd party programs I have tried, I'm inclined to believe that
the issue is not at all with spice-webdavd. It seems like either an XP
bug or misconfiguration of my (clean) installation. In any case, I'm
exploring other options for host/guest file sharing, as I can't seem
to resolve this.

>
>> If this configuration is not supported, I totally understand. Part of
>> why I want to point this out is so that, at the very least, this
>> incompatibility could be added to the Spice User Manual [4]. Thanks!
>>
>
> I would avoid it, Microsoft stopped supporting XP more than 6 years
> ago. Windows XP is abandonware.

Yeah, I have a Windows 10 VM that I use for most things, it's just
that I have a program which requires Windows XP in order to function.

>
>> [1] https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/1481
>> [2]
>> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/phodav/-/blob/2fe6090823b251c7accfd1f9706d2577e06fe189/spice/spice-webdavd.c#L636
>> [3]
>> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/commit/cce29579389e892eb263d8507a71b3b3ca7433bb
>> [4] https://www.spice-space.org/spice-user-manual.html
>
> Frediano
>
>

Thanks!